UN  VERS  TY  OF  CAL  FORM  A   SAN  DIEGO 


3  182202465  2034 


r  ^« 

"-•••-js 

I       SANlMM 


•EX-IIBRIS 

JMKMASOK 


UN  VERS  TY  OF  CALIFORNIA   SAN  DIEGO 


3  1822  02465  2034 


Social  Sciences  &  Humanities  Library 

University  of  California,  San  Diego 
Please  Note:  This  item  is  subject  to  recall. 

Date  Due 


Cl  39  (5/97) 


UCSD  Lib. 


THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 


Photograph  from 
Brown  Brothers, 
K.  Y. 

COUNT 
SEIKI   TERAUCHI 


ADMIRAL 
HEIHACHIRO  TOGO. 


Photonrapli  from  Brou 
Brother*.  AT.  Y. 


FIELD-MARSHAL 
IWAO   OYAMA. 


Factors  in  the  Mastery  of  the  Far  East. 


COPYRIGHT.  1919,  BY 
CHARLES  SCBIBNEB'S  SONS 


Published  March,  1919 


PREFACE 

THE  problems  that  centre  in  the  Far  East  had  assumed 
large  proportions  before  the  outbreak  of  the  European  War 
in  1914.  Since  then  they  have  attained  a  magnitude  that 
renders  them  of  even  more  profound  significance  to  the 
world.  A  new  alignment  of  races  is  developing.  I  have 
discussed  in  other  volumes  the  relations  of  China  and  the 
Philippine  Islands  to  this  movement,  and  I  now  turn  to 
Korea  and  Japan.  The  general  idea  of  this  book  is  that  the 
Korean  Peninsula  is  the  strategic  point  in  the  mastery  of 
the  Far  East.  I,  therefore,  first  describe  the  country  and 
people,  and  then  discuss  the  struggle  between  China  and 
Japan  for  the  possession  of  Korea,  and  its  culmination  in 
the  China-Japan  War;  the  diplomatic  and  military  struggle 
between  Russia  and  Japan  for  the  coveted  prize,  and  its 
culmination  in  the  Russia- Japan  War;  the  supremacy  in 
the  Far  East  that  Japan  won  by  her  victory  in  that  mem- 
orable conflict;  the  policies  and  methods  of  Japan  in  govern- 
ing a  subject  people;  the  characteristics  of  Japan  as  the 
Imperial  Power  hi  Asia  and  a  world-power  of  the  first  mag- 
nitude; and  the  place  and  influence  of  Christian  missions 
as  one  of  the  most  potent  of  the  enlightening  and  recon- 
structive forces  which  are  operating  in  the  Far  East  and 
which  hold  the  promise  of  a  better  world  order. 

The  materials  for  this  volume  were  gathered  during  two 
journeys  to  the  Far  East  and  in  the  studies  and  corre- 
spondence of  many  years.  Some  sharply  controverted  ques- 
tions have  been  necessarily  discussed,  and  the  author  cannot 
reasonably  anticipate  immunity  from  the  criticisms  of  those 
who  will  differ  with  him.  He  can  only  say  that  he  has 
sought  to  be  fair  and  just.  Any  one  who  tries  to  keep  in 
the  middle  of  the  rather  tortuous  road  that  runs  between 
those  who  regard  the  Japanese  as  a  model  people  and 


vi  PREFACE 

those  who  regard  them  as  "varnished  savages,"  and  be- 
tween those  who  assert  that  the  Koreans  are  "afflicted 
saints"  and  those  who  assert  with  equal  vehemence  that 
they  are  "the  most  contemptible  people  on  earth,"  must 
expect  to  be  assailed  from  both  sides. 

While  the  Japanese  have  rightly  restored  the  ancient 
name  of  the  country,  Chosen,  and  have  adopted  their  own 
spellings  of  the  names  of  several  cities  and  other  places, 
I  have  followed  the  advice  of  the  publisher  in  adhering  to 
the  names  that  have  been  sanctioned  by  long  usage  in 
Western  lands.  The  changed  terminology  has  not  yet  be- 
come sufficiently  familiar  in  North  America  and  Great 
Britain  to  enable  many  English  readers  to  recognize  Seoul 
in  Keijo  and  Pyongyang  in  Heijo,  or  to  know  that  when  a 
time-table  schedules  the  arrival  and  departure  of  trains  at 
Seidaimon,  the  railway-station  in  the  capital  is  meant. 

156  FIFTH  AVENUE,  NEW  YORK, 
January  1,  1919. 


CONTENTS 

PART  I 
KOREA— THE  STRATEGIC  POINT  IN  THE  FAR  EAST 

CHAPTER  PAOE 

I.    THE  LAND  OF  KOREA 3 

II.    THE  VANISHED  DAYS  OF  OLD  KOREA 20 

III.  THE  KOREAN  PEOPLE 44 

IV.  KOREAN  CUSTOMS,  EDUCATION,  AND  LITERATURE  .     .  64 
V.    RELIGIOUS  BELIEFS  OF  THE  KOREANS    .     .     *     .     .  81 

VI.    A  RAMBLE  IN  THE  INTERIOR  .  93 


VII.    THE  RIVAL  CLAIMS  OF  CHINA  AND  JAPAN  AND  THE 

CHINA-JAPAN  WAR  .     .     ».,.,.     .     .     .     .  109 

VIII.    RUSSIA'S  EFFORT  TO  OBTAIN  KOREA 127 

IX.    THE  RUSSIA-JAPAN  WAR 148 

X.    CAUSES  AND  EFFECTS  OF  RUSSIAN  DEFEAT      .     .     .  166 

XL    THE  PORTSMOUTH  TREATY  AND  THE  ANGLO-JAPANESE 

CONVENTION .  178 

XII.    JAPANESE  ANNEXATION  OF  KOREA     ...-.*.  195 

XIII.    MANCHURIA  AS  A  FACTOR  IN  THE  FAR  EASTERN  PROBLEM  208 

vii 


viii  CONTENTS 

PART  III 
JAPAN— THE  IMPERIAL  POWER  IN  THE  FAR  EAST 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XIV.    JAPAN  AND  THE  JAPANESE 225 

XV.    FUNDAMENTAL  NATIONAL  DISTINCTIONS    .     .     .  244 

XVI.    JAPAN  AS  A  MILITARY  POWER 254 

XVII.    JAPAN'S  COMMERCIAL  DEVELOPMENT    ....  273 

XVIII.    THE  STRUGGLE  BETWEEN  AUTOCRACY  AND  DEMOC- 
RACY IN  JAPAN  .     ...    ,.     .     .     .     .     .  292 

XIX.    SOCIAL,  AND  ECONOMIC  CONDITIONS     .     ,     .     .  307 

XX.    EDUCATION  IN  JAPAN       .     .    '.     .     .     .     ._   .  318 

XXI.    BUDDHISM  AND  SHINTOISM  IN  JAPAN   ....  328 

XXII.    CHARACTER  or  JAPANESE  RULE  IN  KOREA    .     .341 

XXIII.  BENEFITS  OF  JAPANESE  RULE  IN  KOREA  .     .     .  354 

XXIV.  THE  SOCIAL  AND  MORPHINE  EVILS      ....  376 
XXV.    JAPAN  AND  AMERICA 393 

XXVI.    EFFECT  OF  THE  WORLD  WAR  ON  THE  POSITION 

OF  JAPAN ;W  >vO    .',  416 

XXVII.    DEEPENING  COMPLICATIONS  WITH  CHINA  .     .     .  430 

XXVIII.    JAPAN  AND  SIBERIA 447 

PART  IV 

CHRISTIAN  MISSIONS  IN  THE  PROBLEM  OF  THE 
FAR  EAST 

XXIX.    THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CHRISTIAN  MISSIONS      .     .  469 

XXX.    ROMAN  CATHOLIC  MISSIONS  IN  KOREA     .     .     .  487 

XXXI.    PROTESTANT  MISSIONS  IN  KOREA 500 


CONTENTS  be 


CHAPTER 

XXXII.    KOREAN  CHRISTIANS  .........  524 

XXXIII.  TYPE   AND   PROBLEMS   OF   KOREAN   RELIGIOUS 

THOUGHT      .     ..........  539 

XXXIV.  THE    POLITICO-MISSIONARY    COMPLICATION    IN 

KOREA     ............  559 

XXXV.    JAPANESE  NATIONALISM  AND  MISSION  SCHOOLS  .  586 

XXXVI.    ROMAN  CATHOLIC  AND  RUSSIAN  ORTHODOX  MIS- 

SIONS IN  JAPAN  ..........  611 

XXXVII.    PROTESTANT  MISSIONS  IN  JAPAN    .....  622 

XXXVIII.    TREND  OF  JAPANESE  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT     .     .  643 

XXXIX.    JAPANESE  TESTIMONY  TO  JAPAN'S  URGENT  NEED  652 

INDEX  .  663 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

Factors  in  the  Mastery  of  the  Far  East Frontispiece 

FACING  PAGE 

East  Gate,  Seoul 16 

A  Korean  Official 32 

Korean  Women  Washing  Clothes,  Seoul 66 

Korean  Peddling  Fuel 72 

Fusan 118 

Unveiling  the  Monument  to  the  Russian  Dead  at  Port  Arthur    .     .     .  160 

Mt.  Fuji 232 

A  Road  Scene  in  the  Hakone  District 240 

Nagoya  Castle 260 

Bronze  Statue  of  Buddha,  the  Daibutsu,  at  Kamakura 330 

Shinto  Torii  (Gateway)  at  Miyajima 336 

Procession  of  Shinto  Priests  to  the  Shrines  of  Ise 338 

New  Offices  of  the  Government-General,  Seoul 366 

Telephone  Exchange  in  the  Post-Office,  Seoul 366 

Post-Office,  Seoul 366 

Korean  Students  of  the  Mission  Academy,  Pyengyang 554 

An  Open-Air  Christian  Service  in  Fukui,  Japan 632 

MAP 

The  Heart  of  the  Far  East At  end  of  volume 


PART  I 

KOREA— THE  STRATEGIC  POINT  IN  THE 
FAR  EAST 


CHAPTER  I 
THE  LAND  OF  KOREA 

THE  tide  of  the  world's  travel  has  hardly  more  than 
touched  Korea.  Increasing  numbers  of  travellers  are  visit- 
ing China  and  Japan,  but  most  of  them  pass  by  their  lesser 
neighbor.  No  famous  temples,  no  beautiful  palaces  of  the 
living  or  historic  tombs  of  the  dead  attract  the  globe- 
trotter. Squalid  towns  and  villages  and  wretchedly  poor 
people  offer  faint  lure  to  the  seeker  for  the  artistic  or  the 
picturesque.  And  yet  to  the  thoughtful  student  of  human 
life,  to  one  who  would  understand  the  deep  undercurrents 
of  international  affairs,  and  to  one  who  would  observe  that 
most  wonderful  thing  in  the  world,  the  spiritual  transforma- 
tion of  a  people,  Korea  is  a  deeply  interesting  land. 

It  is  a  small  country  compared  with  mighty  China,  which 
it  adjoins;  and  yet  it  is  of  no  inconsiderable  size,  having 
a  length  of  660  miles,  a  width  of  150  miles,  and  an  area  of 
84,173  square  miles,  or  nearly  one  and  a  half  tunes  that 
of  New  England. 

The  coast-line  is  irregular  and  varies  greatly  in  configura- 
tion. On  the  eastern  side  it  is  rather  precipitous  and  with 
a  small  tide  of  only  about  two  feet.  The  west  coast  slopes 
more  gradually,  and  the  surging  tide  sometimes  attains  a 
height  of  thirty-two  feet.  The  whole  extent  of  coast-line 
is  about  1,940  miles.  Harbors  are  not  numerous,  but  there 
are  several  good  ones.  The  best  are  Gensan  on  the  north- 
east coast,  Fusan  and  Masampo  at  the  southern  end  of  the 
peninsula,  and  Mokpo,  Kunsan,  Chemulpo,  Chinnampo, 
and  Yongampo  on  the  west  coast,  though  not  all  of  these 
harbors  are  of  equal  excellence,  some  of  them  being  un- 
protected when  the  wind  is  in  certain  directions. 

The  west  coast  is  dotted  with  islands.  They  vary  in 
size  from  mere  rocks  to  mountain-crowned  islands  of  con- 

3 


4  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

siderable  area.  In  some  cases  cliffs  rise  precipitously  from 
the  water's  edge;  in  others,  noble  forests  clothe  the  hill- 
sides, while  now  and  then  cultivated  fields  add  their  charm 
to  the  varied  landscape.  When  the  day  is  pleasant  and 
the  water  is  dotted  by  the  sails  of  the  quaint  fishing-boats, 
the  scene  is  very  attractive.  Through  the  transparent 
depths  great  beds  of  coral  can  be  seen  with  then-  varying 
colors  and  exquisite  filaments,  the  perennial  flowers  of  the 
sea. 

Sailors,  however,  dread  the  dangers  of  this  archipelago. 
It  was  first  made  known  in  Europe  by  Captain  Basil  Hall, 
of  the  Lyra,  and  Captain  Maxwell,  of  the  Alceste,  in  1816. 
At  that  time  its  situation  was  not  indicated  on  the  Chinese 
charts,  or  on  those  made  by  the  Jesuits  of  Peking.  In- 
deed, at  the  time  of  my  second  visit,  in  1909,  these  waters 
had  never  been  adequately  sounded  and  charted,  and  there 
was  not  a  lighthouse  or  a  buoy  on  the  whole  coast.  Since 
then  the  Japanese  have  been  preparing  charts  and  placing 
lights  and  buoys  to  mark  the  channels.  Navigation  still 
remains  more  or  less  dangerous,  for  rocks  and  reefs  are 
numerous,  and  tidal  currents  sweep  hi  and  out  of  these 
narrow  passages  with  terrific  force.  When  fogs  descend 
upon  them,  as  they  often  do,  it  is  extremely  difficult  for  the 
mariner  to  find  his  way.  Many  are  the  tragic  shipwrecks 
that  have  resulted,  and  sorrowful  is  the  toll  of  death  which 
these  treacherous  seas  have  exacted. 

The  most  notable  of  the  islands  which  border  the  south 
and  west  coast  are  Quelpart  and  Kang-wa.  The  former  is 
the  largest  island  of  Korea.  It  lies  about  sixty  miles  south- 
west of  the  peninsula,  and  has  been  called  "the  Sicily  of 
Korea."  It  has  been  well  populated  from  an  early  period, 
and  almost  every  arable  square  rod  of  ground  is  culti- 
vated, even  the  mountainsides  having  been  laboriously 
terraced.  The  inhabitants  have  not  borne  a  good  reputa- 
tion, as  the  island  was  formerly  used  as  a  sort  of  "Botany 
Bay"  for  criminals  and  political  adventurers  from  the  main- 
land. When  it  first  appears  in  history  it  was  an  inde- 
pendent kingdom  called  Tam-na.  At  the  end  of  the  first 


THE  LAND  OF  KOREA  5 

century  of  the  Christian  era,  there  is  a  record  of  tribute 
sent  to  one  of  the  petty  kingdoms  on  the  mainland;  but 
long  ago  the  island  became  an  integral  part  of  Korea. 

Kang-wa  lies  off  the  mouth  of  the  Han  River,  and  is  a 
place  of  considerable  historical  interest.  It  has  frequently 
served  as  a  fortress  and  special  refuge  in  time  of  danger 
for  the  royal  family,  while  at  other  times  it  has  provided  a 
convenient  place  of  banishment  for  princes  and  nobles 
who  had  incurred  the  imperial  wrath. 

One  does  not  expect  to  find  mighty  streams  in  such  a 
comparatively  small  country,  but  the  rivers  of  Korea 
make  up  in  interest  for  what  they  lack  in  size.  They  come 
rushing  down  from  the  mountains,  crooked  and  often  diffi- 
cult or  impossible  of  navigation,  but  usually  cool  and 
sparkling,  noisily  tumbling  through  narrow  gorges,  rippling 
around  bends  and  islets,  and  when  they  reach  the  lower 
levels  becoming  more  turbid,  indeed,  but  flowing  smoothly 
and  quietly  to  the  sea. 

The  Yalu  is  the  longest  of  Korean  rivers,  flowing  from  a 
source  high  among  the  Ever  White  Mountains.  For  a 
considerable  part  of  its  course  it  forms  the  boundary  be- 
tween Korea  and  Manchuria,  and  it  figures  largely  in  the 
troubled  history  of  the  border.  It  is  the  Rubicon  of  this 
part  of  the  world,  whose  crossing  by  armies  has  been  the 
signal  for  many  a  war.  The  heavy  rains  of  midsummer 
and  the  melting  snows  of  spring  often  cause  freshets  and 
make  the  current  so  swift  that  the  water  becomes  muddy; 
but  at  other  seasons  it  is  clear  and  attractive.  The  silt  and 
gravel  which  it  has  carried  down  for  ages  have  formed  a 
delta  through  which  the  river  makes  its  way  by  three  chan- 
nels into  the  Yellow  Sea.  The  river  is  navigable  about 
sixty  miles  from  the  sea  to  the  ancient  town  of  Chan-son. 

The  Tumen  River  rises  on  the  eastern  slope  of  the  water- 
shed of  the  Ever  White  Mountains,  and  runs  northeasterly 
for  more  than  one  hundred  and  fifty  miles  before  it  bends 
southward  to  enter  the  Japan  Sea  within  eighty  miles  of 
Vladivostok.  It  forms  the  northeastern  boundary  be- 
tween Korea  and  Manchuria,  as  the  Yalu  forms  the  boundary 


6  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

on  the  north  and  northwest.  Like  the  latter,  the  current 
and  depth  vary  greatly  with  the  season.  In  dry  weather 
the  stream  is  shallow  and  peaceful,  but  in  the  spring  and 
fall  freshets  it  becomes  a  roaring  torrent.  In  winter  the 
passage  is  made  easy  by  the  ice,  across  which  for  centuries 
Koreans  and  Chinese  have  fled  when  they  have  had  special 
reason  for  getting  out  of  their  respective  countries  with  all 
haste. 

The  Tatong  River  was,  in  olden  days,  a  boundary  stream 
for  considerable  periods.  It  is  navigable  for  launches  and 
small,  flat-bottomed  steamers  to  a  point  near  Pyengyang, 
where  it  is  four  hundred  yards  wide,  although  the  channel 
is  crooked  and  there  are  many  rapids  and  sand-bars.  Boats 
can  go  some  distance  above  Pyengyang  when  the  water  is 
high,  but  the  river  can  hardly  be  called  navigable  above  the 
city.  As  the  mouth  is  only  eighty  miles  from  the  Chinese 
ports  of  Chefoo  and  Teng-chou,  Chinese  invading  expedi- 
tions often  entered  the  country  by  the  Tatong.  When 
the  two  countries  were  not  at  war,  Chinese  pirates  used  the 
same  convenient  route.  The  Koreans  kept  sentries  on  this 
part  of  their  coast  for  many  centuries,  and  when  Chinese 
vessels  were  seen  approaching,  signal-fires  carried  the  mes- 
sages of  danger  to  other  watchers  on  more  distant  hills, 
who  in  turn  built  other  fires,  so  that  in  an  incredibly  short 
time  beacons  from  scores  of  hill  and  mountain  tops  aroused 
the  whole  countryside. 

A  more  important  river  is  the  Han.  It,  too,  teems  with 
historic  associations  since  it  is  in  the  centre  of  the  country, 
and,  until  the  construction  of  the  railway,  furnished  the 
most  convenient  route  to  Seoul,  the  capital.  It  rises  in  the 
Diamond  Mountains  of  Kang-wen  Province,  only  thirty 
miles  from  the  Japan  Sea.  It  is  navigable  for  junks  and 
light-draught  steamers  to  Seoul,  about  fifty-six  miles  from 
its  mouth,  and  smaller  craft  run  up  about  one  hundred  and 
fourteen  miles  farther.  Above  that  point  rapids  are  nu- 
merous. The  river  is  the  great  highway  of  travel  and 
transportation  for  the  populous  provinces  through  which 
it  flows,  and  hundreds  of  quaint  boats  dot  its  surface.  It 


THE  LAND  OF  KOREA  7 

% 

is  a  swift  and  crooked  stream,  and  loaded  with  silt.  The 
high  tides  of  the  western  coast  surge  up  the  channel  and 
check  the  current,  but  at  low  tide  the  river  reasserts  itself 
and  pours  its  volume  more  swiftly  than  ever  into  the  sea. 
The  result  of  this  alternate  stopping  and  flowing  appears 
in  frequent  changes  of  the  channel,  and  in  sand-bars,  which 
make  navigation  difficult  and  treacherous  except  at  high 
water.  In  1845  the  French  vainly  tried  to  find  the  chan- 
nel, but  in  1866  two  of  their  warships  managed  to  reach 
the  capital.  The  Japanese,  quick  to  see  the  advantages  of 
river  communication,  have  spent  large  sums  in  making  a 
permanent  channel,  so  that  the  river  is  likely  to  be  even 
more  important  in  the  future  than  in  the  past. 

Other  rivers  are  the  Rin-chin,  which,  rising  in  the  moun- 
tains of  Kang-wen,  not  far  from  Gensan,  flows  into  the 
Han;  the  Keum,  which  flows  into  Basil's  Bay;  the  Mokpo, 
which  empties  into  the  Yellow  Sea  in  the  extreme  south- 
west, and  the  Naktong,  which  flows  into  the  Korean 
Strait,  about  seven  miles  from  Fusan,  and  is  navigable  for 
junks  and  small  steamers  for  one  hundred  miles,  while  boats 
drawing  less  than  three  feet  can  ascend  seventy  miles 
farther. 

Lying  between  the  thirty-fourth  and  forty-third  paral- 
lels of  latitude,  the  climate  of  Korea  is  that  of  the  north 
temperate  zone.  The  southern  end  of  the  peninsula  is  in 
the  latitude  of  Maryland,  and  the  northern  end  in  that  of 
Massachusetts,  and  the  climate  in  general  is  not  unlike 
that  of  the  corresponding  portion  of  the  United  States. 
The  summers  are  hot  and  wet,  but  the  other  seasons,  as  a 
rule,  are  exceedingly  fine.  The  rainfall  is  about  thirty-six 
inches  a  year,  the  heaviest  rains  being  in  July  and  August. 
The  winters  are  usually  dry,  clear,  and  crisp. 

The  country  abounds  in  the  vegetation  of  the  temperate 
zone.  The  hillsides  near  the  cities  have  been  denuded  of 
their  forests,  but  farther  back  one  finds  forests  of  pine, 
oak,  maple,  birch,  ash,  and  juniper.  Flowers  and  flowering 
shrubs  grow  in  delightful  variety.  Song-birds  are  few,  and 
the  traveller  misses  some  of  the  melodious  warblers  of  Eng- 


8       THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

land  and  America;  but  the  sportsman  finds  several  varieties 
of  wild  ducks  and  geese.  The  imperial  crane  stalks  solemnly 
about  the  rice-fields,  and  the  splendid  Mongolian  pheasant 
is  abundant.  During  our  journey  through  the  interior  it 
was  easy  to  keep  our  table  well  supplied  with  this  most 
delicious  of  pheasants. 

Animals  are  found  in  smaller  numbers  and  more  limited 
variety  than  in  many  other  lands.  I  did  not  see  a  sheep  or 
a  goat  anywhere,  and  was  told  that  the  grass  was  too 
sour  for  them.  Deer,  antelopes,  and  leopards  are  found 
among  the  mountains,  and  the  diligent  hunter  may  get  a 
shot  at  a  tiger.  One  would  not  naturally  look  in  Korea  for 
this  savage  lord  of  the  wilderness,  but  here  he  is,  not  only 
on  the  lower  slopes  of  the  hills  but  even  amid  the  snow  and 
ice  of  the  northern  mountains.  The  natives  fear  the  tiger, 
and  as  their  weapons  are  poor  he  is  very  bold,  prowling 
around  the  smaller  villages  and  sometimes  even  crashing 
through  the  thatched  roof  of  a  hut  to  carry  off  a  woman 
or  child.  There  is  a  popular  saying  among  the  Chinese 
across  the  border,  that  "the  Koreans  hunt  the  tiger  during 
half  the  year,  and  the  tigers  hunt  the  Koreans  during  the 
other  half."  In  the  regions  infested  by  these  dread  beasts 
the  terror  of  the  people  is  so  great  that  coolies  are  unwill- 
ing to  travel  at  night,  and  if  they  are  forced  to  do  so,  they 
wave  torches  and  beat  gongs,  and  shout  at  the  top  of  their 
voices  to  keep  up  their  courage  and  to  frighten  away  any 
savage  prowler.  The  tiger  naturally  figures  largely  in  the 
superstitions  and  folk-lore  of  the  common  people,  and  many 
proverbs  relate  to  him.  The  modern  rifles  introduced  by 
the  Japanese  and  the  high  value  of  the  skins  are  now  rapidly 
diminishing  the  number  of  these  wild  rovers.  Five  hun- 
dred tiger-skins  were  exported  in  a  single  year  from  Gensan, 
a  rate  which  points  to  the  early  extinction  of  this  true  king 
of  beasts. 

Opinions  differ  as  to  the  value  of  Korea's  resources. 
One  traveller  declares  that  "there  is  absolutely  nothing 
worth  having  in  Korea,  except  perhaps  a  mineral  wealth, 
only  to  be  discovered  by  a  vast  expenditure  of  capital; 


THE  LAND  OF  KOREA  9 

and  that  five-sixths  of  the  country  is  occupied  by  lonely 
mountains  or  scantily  clad  hills."  This  is  a  superficial 
judgment.  Mountains  are  usually  "lonely,"  anywhere,  and 
some  of  the  richest  hills  in  the  world  are  "scantily  clad." 
Mining  can  be  carried  on  far  more  easily  than  in  frozen 
Alaska,  which  has  poured  out  golden  streams.  Geological 
explorations  made  since  the  Japanese  occupation  have  dis- 
closed a  wealth  of  minerals.  Gold,  silver,  copper,  graphite, 
iron,  coal,  and  chalk  have  been  found,  some  of  them  in 
extensive  deposits.  The  graphite  of  Ham-gyongdo  averages 
eighty  per  cent  fine  as  compared  with  the  seventy-five  per 
cent  graphite  of  Italy.  The  region  about  Pyengyang  has 
long  had  the  reputation  of  being  rich  in  gold  and  silver, 
but  the  mines  were  never  worked  to  advantage  until  for- 
eigners obtained  the  concessions.  In  1909  there  were  368 
mines  in  Korea:  312  were  owned  and  operated  by  Japa- 
nese and  Koreans,  jointly;  6  by  Japanese  and  Americans, 
and  1  by  Japanese  and  Germans.  American  concession- 
aires controlled  8,  German  6,  British  5,  French  2,  and 
Italian  2.1  The  principal  gold-mines  are  at  Unsan,  Chikusan, 
Suwan,  and  Kosung.  Within  a  dozen  years  after  the  con- 
cession was  granted  in  1896,  the  Unsan  mine  had  yielded 
1,637,591  tons  of  ore,  valued  at  $10,701,157.  A  government 
coal-mine  near  Pyengyang  produces  60,000  tons  of  anthracite 
a  year.  Iron  ore  is  found  in  many  parts  of  the  country,  and 
the  mines  at  Changyang  and  Wuryul,  in  the  Province  of 
Whang-hai,  are  working  profitable  veins.  There  is  a  prom- 
ising copper-mine  at  Kapsan.  The  Japanese  are  now  ac- 
tively developing  the  mineral  resources  of  the  country,  and 
their  thoroughness  and  modern  scientific  methods  are  meet- 
ing with  an  encouraging  degree  of  success. 

Agriculturally,  Korea  has  great  possibilities.  It  is  true 
that  the  numerous  mountains  exclude  large  areas  from 
cultivation,  and  I  found  a  difference  of  opinion  among 
residents  as  to  whether  the  country  could  maintain  a  much 
larger  population  than  it  now  has.  I  can  only  state  that 

*Iwaya  Hosoi,  engineer  of  the  Japanese  Bureau  of  Mines,  in  the  Oriental 
Review,  December  24,  1910. 


10  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

my  own  observations  in  travelling  about  the  country  did 
not  give  me  occasion  to  doubt.  The  bottoms  of  the  more 
fertile  valleys  are  well  occupied  by  rice-fields;  but  I  saw 
tens  of  thousands  of  acres  of  good-looking  land  which  was 
either  not  cultivated  at  all  or  so  slightly  tilled  that  it  was 
yielding  only  a  small  proportion  of  what  it  might  be  made 
to  produce,  while  innumerable  hill-slopes  were  wholly  un- 
touched. Such  intensive  cultivation  and  terracing  of  hill- 
sides as  one  sees  in  Japan  and  Syria  would  enormously  in- 
crease the  agricultural  output  of  Korea.  Even  under  the 
crude  and  shiftless  methods  of  the  Koreans  the  land  pro- 
duces generous  harvests  of  rice,  beans,  peas,  barley,  millet, 
cotton,  tobacco,  ginseng,  and  the  castor-bean.  The  first 
two,  being  the  staple  food  of  the  people,  are  the  chief  crops. 
Large  quantities  of  millet  are  also  raised.  Not  only  is  the 
grain  a  valued  article  of  food,  but  the  tall  and  strong  stalk 
is  put  to  a  variety  of  uses.  It  supplies  material  for  matting, 
fencing,  and  the  poorer  class  of  houses.  The  ginseng  is  the 
best  in  the  world.  A  single  guild  formerly  had  the  monopoly 
of  exporting  it,  and  its  exclusive  rights  were  protected  by 
a  law  which  inflicted  the  death  penalty  on  any  one  who 
dared  to  ship  the  root  out  of  the  country.  Smugglers,  how- 
ever, managed  to  do  a  thriving  business  in  certain  places, 
but  so  valuable  is  the  root,  and  so  unlimited  is  the  demand 
for  it  in  China,  that  the  guild  sometimes  paid  the  King 
half  a  million  dollars  a  year  in  royalties.  The  Japanese 
Government-General  has  taken  over  the  monopoly  and  is 
doing  everything  in  its  power  to  foster  the  industry. 

Less  than  ten  per  cent  of  the  area  of  the  country,  and 
less  than  half  of  its  arable  land  were  under  cultivation 
when  the  Japanese  annexed  the  peninsula.  With  the 
modern  methods  of  agriculture  which  the  Japanese  are 
now  effectively  teaching,  Korea  could  feed  double  the 
number  of  people  who  now  occupy  it,  to  say  nothing  of 
the  added  means  of  wealth  which  the  development  of  other 
resources  and  of  manufacturing  would  bring.  The  fisheries 
alone  might  yield  millions  of  dollars  annually,  for  Korea 
has  the  sea  upon  three  sides,  and  the  waters  teem  with  food- 


THE  LAND  OF  KOREA  11 

fish.  Then  it  should  be  borne  in  mind  that  prior  to  the 
coming  of  the  Japanese  there  was  practically  no  factory 
population.  The  development  of  trade  and  manufactures 
would  give  employment  to  hundreds  of  thousands  of  people. 
There  appears  no  reason  to  doubt,  therefore,  that  Korea 
could  easily  maintain  a  far  larger  population  than  it  has 
to-day. 

Korean  scenery  does  not  at  first  impress  one  favorably. 
The  hills  look  bare,  and  the  traveller  who  sees  them  for  the 
first  time,  especially  in  wintry  weather,  is  apt  to  consider 
them  gloomy  and  desolate  as  compared  with  the  tree-clad 
hills  of  Japan.  But  a  better  knowledge  of  the  country  leads 
one  to  a  juster  appreciation.  The  landscape,  save  in  a 
few  places,  is  much  diversified.  Some  of  the  valleys  are 
wide  and  flat,  but  most  of  them  gently  rise  to  the  border- 
ing hills.  A  range  of  mountains  runs  irregularly  the  entire 
length  of  the  peninsula,  with  outflanking  ridges  of  varying 
height.  The  range  is  not  a  lofty  one,  few  peaks  reaching 
an  altitude  of  5,000  feet,  and  only  one,  Mt.  Paik-to-san 
(Ever  White  Head  Peak),  attains  8,000  feet.  It  is  an  ex- 
tinct volcano,  and  the  water-filled  crater  forms  a  lake  of 
great  beauty  and  of  unknown  depth.  It  is  greatly  revered, 
and  not  only  Korean  but  Chinese  and  Japanese  writers  have 
sung  its  praises.  It  is  popularly  believed  to  be  the  abode 
of  a  goddess,  who  is  the  presiding  deity  of  this  range  of 
mountains.  The  northern  regions  abound  in  bold  moun- 
tains, narrow  valleys,  and  rushing  streams.  The  Chang 
Syung  and  Syek  Tong  districts  abound  with  villages  of 
Alpine  picturesqueness.  Kwallondong,  for  example,  nestles 
in  a  gorge  that  would  make  it  famous  if  it  were  more  accessi- 
ble, while  Kwen  Myen  lies  cosily  in  one  of  the  most  lovely 
valleys  in  the  world.  Famous  also  are  the  Diamond 
Mountains,  in  the  Province  of  Kang-wen,  which  Mrs. 
Isabella  Bird  Bishop  so  charmingly  described.  Of  the  cliffs 
and  canyons  viewed  from  the  monastery  of  Chyang-yang 
Sa  she  says:  "Surely  the  beauty  of  that  eleven  miles  is 
not  much  exceeded  anywhere  on  earth."  The  Western 
traveller  who  is  tired  of  crowded  resorts  with  their  artificial 


12  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

social  conventions  may  find  in  the  mountains  of  Korea  a 
charm  which  will  well  repay  him  for  a  journey  half-way 
round  the  world. 

Unlike  Japan  and  China,  Korea  has  no  city  which  can  be 
listed  among  the  great  cities  of  the  world.  It  is  a  land  of 
villages,  with  here  and  there  a  large  town,  and  only  occa- 
sionally one  of  considerable  size.  Fusan,  at  the  southern 
end  of  the  peninsula,  is  the  place  first  seen  by  the  average 
traveller.  Being  the  Korean  port  nearest  to  Japan,  it  was 
naturally  the  first  to  come  under  Japanese  influence.  It 
was  long  considered  a  part  of  the  domain  of  the  lord  of 
Tsushima,  and  in  1443  the  prefect  of  Tongnai,  near  Fusan, 
entered  into  an  agreement  with  the  feudal  lord  of  Tsushima 
by  which  the  Japanese  were  given  the  right  of  permanent 
settlement.  The  Korean  nobles  who  brought  tribute  to 
Japan  sailed  from  Fusan,  and  at  Fusan  landed  the  invading 
armies  of  Hideyoshi  in  1592  and  1593.  For  centuries  after 
this,  and  through  all  the  vicissitudes  of  unhappy  Korea's 
relations  with  the  contending  powers  of  China  and  Japan, 
Japan  managed  to  keep  her  hold  upon  this  valuable  port 
and  the  Japanese  settlers  had  the  unique  distinction  of 
being  "the  only  Japanese  colony  in  the  world."  With  the 
downfall  of  the  Shogun  and  the  feudal  system  in  1868,  the 
suzerainty  of  Fusan  was  transferred  from  the  feudal  lord 
of  Tsushima  to  the  Mikado.  The  opening  of  the  city  as  a 
treaty  port  in  1876  inaugurated  a  new  era,  and  business 
and  population  began  to  increase.  Growth  became  rapid 
after  the  Russia-Japan  War  and  the  completion  of  the  rail- 
way to  Seoul,  three  hundred  miles  northward.  The  con- 
trast between  my  first  and  second  visits,  eight  years 
apart,  was  amazing.  The  squalid  town  had  become 
a  bustling  city.  Great  docks  were  being  constructed. 
Shipping  filled  the  harbor.  Freight  and  passenger  trains 
noisily  rushed  in  and  out  of  the  new  railway  station.  Shops 
and  hotels  were  crowded.  Large  warehouses  and  public 
buildings  were  under  construction.  Streets  were  being 
straightened  and  widened,  and  thousands  of  coolies  were 
toiling  on  these  and  other  improvements.  The  Japanese 


THE  LAND  OF  KOREA  13 

population  has  rapidly  increased  in  the  last  decade,  and  the 
Korean  population  also  has  grown  on  account  of  the  em- 
ployment which  the  Japanese  improvements  have  made 
available. 

Chemulpo,  on  the  west  coast,  was  opened  to  foreign 
trade  by  the  treaty  of  1882,  at  which  time  it  was  a  wretched 
fishing  hamlet  of  only  fifteen  huts.  It  soon  came  into  im- 
portance as  the  gateway  to  the  capital,  twenty-six  miles 
distant.  The  so-called  harbor  is  hardly  more  than  a  road- 
stead, save  as  some  small  islands  afford  partial  protection. 
A  thirty-two  foot  tide  on  a  sloping  bottom  means  that  at 
low  water  there  is  a  wide  mud  flat.  A  few  years  ago,  if  the 
traveller  arrived  at  that  stage,  as  I  did,  his  steamer  had 
to  anchor  far  out,  and  he  had  a  sloppy  and  malodorous 
experience  in  getting  ashore,  first  in  a  sampan,  a  clumsy, 
flat-bottomed  boat  sculled  by  a  single  oar,  and  then  on 
the  back  of  a  coolie.  The  harbor  facilities  are  now  much 
better.  Realizing  the  importance  of  the  port,  the  Imperial 
Diet,  in  the  spring  of  1911,  authorized  the  expenditure  of 
three  and  a  half  million  yen  in  six  years  for  harbor  improve- 
ments at  Chemulpo,  and  June  11  of  that  year  Governor 
General  Terauchi  inaugurated  the  work  amid  imposing 
ceremonies.  The  improvements  include  a  wall  500  yards 
long,  and  a  locked  dock  120,000  square  yards  in  area  and 
26  feet  in  depth.  Vessels  of  4,500  tons  can  be  moored 
alongside  the  wall,  and  three  movable  cranes,  with  a  lift- 
ing power  of  from  one  and  a  half  to  three  tons,  make  quick 
work  of  loading  and  unloading  the  many  steamers  that 
make  the  place  a  port  of  call.  There  are  stores  in  which 
one  can  buy  many  kinds  of  supplies,  and  for  many  years 
there  was  a  hotel  kept  by  a  Chinese,  where,  if  one  were  not 
fastidious,  he  could  get  something  to  eat  and  a  place  to 
sleep.  Itai,  the  proprietor,  was  an  alert  and  reliable  man, 
who  had  so  long  responded  to  the  call  for  a  steward  on  a 
coasting  steamer  that  the  title  clung  to  him  after  he  opened 
a  store  and  hotel  on  shore,  and  for  years  "Steward's"  was 
famous.  The  engaging  Celestial  proved  a  friend  in  need 
to  many  a  traveller,  doing  everything  he  could  with  a 


14  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

ready  good  nature  which  disarmed  criticism.  The  hotel 
has  now  given  way  to  Japanese  inns,  but  "Steward"  still 
conducts  prosperous  shops  in  Chemulpo  and  Seoul.  Che- 
mulpo figures  prominently  in  the  troubled  history  of  Korea. 
Here  the  Japanese  in  1894  sunk  a  Chinese  transport  and 
landed  for  their  victorious  march  to  Seoul;  and  here  a 
Japanese  squadron  overwhelmed  the  Russian  cruisers, 
Variag  and  Korietz,  at  the  beginning  of  the  Russia-Japan 
War,  in  1904.  The  population  has  increased  rapidly  since 
the  Japanese  occupation.  The  Japanese  quarter  is  large. 
Business  has  developed  considerable  proportions,  and  the 
docks  are  piled  with  goods  for  the  export  and  import  trade 
of  the  interior  cities. 

Pyongyang,  on  the  Tatong  River,  thirty-five  miles  from 
the  port  of  Chinnampo,  is  the  leading  city  in  northern 
Korea.  Although  the  census  gives  it  only  51,846  inhabi- 
tants, it  is  the  metropolis  of  about  4,000,000  people,  who 
live  in  the  forty-four  counties  of  the  North  and  South 
Pyeng-An  provinces.  The  city  stands  on  rising  ground, 
and  the  view  from  the  city  wall  includes  the  winding  stream, 
a  fertile  valley,  and  ranges  of  noble  hills.  Pyongyang  has 
historic  associations,  for  it  claims  to  have  been  founded 
more  than  three  thousand  years  ago.  Kija,  the  traditional 
founder  of  the  city,  is  said  to  have  been  the  first  to  observe 
that  the  site  was  shaped  like  a  boat,  and  therefore  that  wells 
must  not  be  dug,  as  they  would  make  holes  in  the  bottom 
and  sink  the  city.  He  wanted  a  well  for  his  own  use,  but 
to  guard  against  the  danger  of  scuttling  the  craft,  he  caused 
a  huge  metal  bowl  to  be  made  and  placed  at  the  bottom 
of  the  well.  Ever  since,  the  people  have  continued  to  be- 
lieve that  the  city  lies  in  a  boat.  They  placed  heavy  stone 
posts  at  the  end  of  the  valley  to  keep  it  from  floating  away, 
and  they  laboriously  carried  water  from  the  river  rather 
than  run  the  risk  of  digging  wells,  which  would  have  let 
the  underlying  water  flood  their  habitations.  Pyongyang 
was  the  scene  of  the  decisive  battle  between  the  Chinese 
and  Japanese  in  the  China-Japan  War  of  1894.  Most  of 
the  buildings  were  destroyed,  and  those  that  were  left  were 


THE  LAND  OF  KOREA  15 

looted  by  thieves,  and  the  woodwork  used  for  fuel  by  the 
victorious  Japanese.  The  terror-stricken  inhabitants,  who 
had  fled  at  the  first  sound  of  trouble,  were  slow  to  return, 
and  the  population  of  the  city  fell  from  80,000  to  15,000. 
It  has  since  increased,  but  it  is  only  now  regaining  its  former 
prosperity.  Few  visitors,  however,  would  tarry  long  in 
Pyongyang  if  it  were  not  for  the  world-famed  missionary 
work,  which  will  be  referred  to  again  in  a  later  chapter. 

Gensan,  one  hundred  and  seventy  miles  northeast  of 
Seoul,  is  the  leading  city  on  the  eastern  coast.  It  is  situ- 
ated on  Broughton  Bay,  which  takes  its  name  from  the 
British  captain  W.  R.  Broughton,  who  surveyed  it  in  1797. 
Port  Lazareff,  at  the  upper  end  of  the  bay,  about  sixteen 
miles  from  Gensan,  was  named  by  the  Russians,  who  sur- 
veyed its  waters  in  1854,  and  who  have  long  coveted  that 
deep  and  safe  harbor  for  one  of  the  termini  of  the  Trans- 
Siberian  Railway.  The  whole  bay  is  well  protected  by 
islands  and  promontories,  and  forms  one  of  the  most  mag- 
nificent harbors  in  the  world.  Its  length  is  about  twenty 
miles,  and  its  width  varies  from  two  to  six  miles,  with  a 
depth  ranging  from  six  to  twelve  fathoms.  The  town  was 
opened  as  a  treaty  port,  May  1,  1880.  Not  only  as  the 
entrance  to  northeastern  Korea,  but  as  the  nearest  Korean 
port  to  the  Russian  base  at  Vladivostok,  Gensan  is  a  place 
of  considerable  political  importance,  while  its  relation  to 
trade  as  the  gateway  from  the  Japan  Sea  to  northern 
Korea  has  brought  to  it  a  considerable  foreign  colony. 
The  Japanese  far  outnumber  all  other  foreigners  combined 
and  have  built  an  unusually  attractive  quarter.  There  are 
interesting  shops,  a  bank,  a  custom-house,  a  schoolhouse, 
and  several  other  good  buildings.  Steamers  run  regularly 
to  Japan  and  China,  and  the  new  railway  to  Seoul  opens 
up  a  rich  tributary  region  and  affords  easy  access  to  other 
parts  of  the  country. 

Wiju,  on  the  Yalu  River,  not  far  from  its  mouth,  was  for 
centuries  the  gateway  between  Korea  and  China  through 
which  the  tribute  embassies  passed  on  their  way  to  Peking. 
It  has  gained  in  importance  in  recent  years  as  the  point 


16  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

where  the  great  bridge  spans  the  Yalu  and  the  stream  of 
railway  travel  from  Europe,  China,  and  Manchuria  enters 
Korea.  Formerly  a  wretched  fishing  village,  it  is  now  a 
bustling  city.  As  the  first  city  in  Korea  that  is  reached  by 
the  trains  from  Mukden  to  Seoul  and  Fusan,  Wiju  takes 
itself  quite  seriously.  The  Japanese  have  developed  a  new 
city  not  far  from  the  old  Korean  town,  and  modern  improve- 
ments have  rapidly  developed. 

Seoul  is  the  largest  city  in  the  country,  and  the  only  one 
which  reports  a  population  of  more  than  a  hundred  thou- 
sand. The  census  for  the  urban  prefecture  gives  302,686 
inhabitants,  of  whom  50,291  are  Japanese.  The  word 
simply  means  "capital,"  so  that  if  the  seat  of  government 
were  to  be  anywhere  else  that  place  would  become  "Seoul." 
The  first  ruler  of  the  present  dynasty  wanted  to  signalize 
his  reign  by  founding  a  new  capital.  He  fixed  upon  the 
town  which  had  long  stood  upon  the  bank  of  the  Han 
River,  and  in  1395  it  became  "Seoul."  The  site  is  excep- 
tionally fine.  It  is  not  far  from  the  geographical  centre  of 
the  country,  in  a  valley  about  five  miles  in  length  by  three 
in  width,  and  surrounded  by  mountains  which,  in  the  clear 
atmosphere,  seem  to  be  close  at  hand.  Their  serrated  peaks 
outlined  against  the  sky  make  a  superb  natural  rampart. 
There  are  many  attractive  nooks  of  a  quieter  character 
along  the  banks  of  the  river.  The  venerable  wall,  now 
falling  into  decay,  was  built  by  the  founder  of  the  dynasty, 
and  is  about  22  feet  in  height  and  9  miles  in  circumference. 
It  is  said  that  198,000  men  toiled  a  month,  and  80,000  men 
one  more  month,  in  building  this  wall,  which  is  constructed 
of  massive  blocks  of  stone.  Eight  ponderous  gates  give 
access  to  the  city,  each  surmounted  by  massive  roofs.  The 
low-tiled  and  thatched  houses  of  the  city  appear  "like  a 
vast  bed  of  mushrooms."  Here  and  there  larger  buildings 
rise.  Most  prominent  among  these  are  the  Roman  Catholic 
cathedral  and  the  European  and  American  consulates. 
The  palace  grounds  occupy  a  large  space,  and  the  foliage 
appears  green  and  beautiful  in  a  city  where  shade-trees  are 
few.  Most  of  the  streets  are  mere  alleys,  but  those  leading 


THE  LAND  OF  KOREA  17 

from  the  gates  are  wide  enough  to  allow  two  carriages  to 
pass,  and  one  is  a  really  noble  avenue,  a  hundred  feet  wide 
and  three  miles  long.  It  is  one  of  the  most  picturesque 
streets  in  the  world:  sedan  chairs,  jinrikishas,  bicycles, 
carriages,  and  clanging  trolley-cars;  coolies  with  their 
clumsy  jickies;  women  carrying  bundles  of  clothing,  and 
children  playing  or  going  to  or  from  school;  pack  ponies 
led  by  frowsy  countrymen,  and  bullocks  so  heavily  loaded 
with  fuel  that  they  look  like  moving  piles  of  wood;  uni- 
formed policemen,  Japanese  soldiers,  civilian  Japanese  in 
their  wooden  shoes  and  native  dress,  other  Japanese  and 
some  Koreans  in  foreign  attire;  and  everywhere,  paying 
little  heed  to  vehicles  in  spite  of  the  frantic  shouts  of  their 
drivers,  the  leisurely  moving  throng  of  Koreans  of  the  old 
regime,  their  odd  hats,  flowing  white  robes  and  long  pipes 
giving  them  a  quaint  appearance,  like  some  moving  figures 
from  a  bygone  age. 

The  objects  of  special  interest  in  Seoul  are  not  numerous. 
Notable  buildings  are  few,  and  the  great  temples  that  one 
sees  in  Japan  and  China  are  conspicuous  by  their  absence. 
Of  course,  the  traveller  visits  the  Royal  Palace,  the  Corona- 
tion Altar,  the  Japanese  quarter,  the  Independence  Hall 
and  arch  beyond  the  west  gate,  a  marble  pagoda  presented 
by  a  Mongol  Emperor  to  his  daughter,  who  was  Queen  of 
Korea  in  1354,  and  the  great  bronze  bell,  called  the  third 
largest  in  the  world.  For  five  hundred  years  this  bell  sig- 
nalled the  opening  and  closing  of  the  city  gates  with  a 
quaint  ceremony  that  has  now  been  abandoned.  Many 
small  brass  bells  are  suspended  from  the  eaves  of  several 
of  the  palace  buildings.  A  fish  of  the  same  metal  is  fast- 
ened to  the  clapper  by  a  chain,  and  when  the  wind  blows 
these  fishes  back  and  forth  the  bells  ring.  At  sunrise  or 
sunset,  when  a  gentle  breeze  is  blowing,  the  effect  is  singu- 
larly sweet. 

Under  the  old  regime  Seoul  literally  swarmed  with  offi- 
cials and  their  dependents.  It  was  popularly  called  "the 
city  of  3,000  officials,"  as  that  number  of  the  3,800  officials 
in  the  whole  country  were  said  to  be  in  the  capital.  Their 


18  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

pride  of  position,  their  political  ambitions,  and  their  usually 
dissolute  lives  naturally  determined  to  a  considerable  de- 
gree the  character  of  the  city  as  a  whole.  Recent  years 
have  witnessed  a  remarkable  transformation  in  this  famous 
old  capital.  Many  of  the  once  haughty  nobles  were  im- 
poverished by  the  wars,  or  lost  their  positions  when  the 
government  passed  into  alien  hands.  A  great  Japanese 
colony  has  grown  up.  The  railway  stations  outside  the 
wall  have  become  the  busiest  centres  of  the  metropolis, 
and  evidences  of  the  new  political  and  commercial  era  are 
to  be  seen  on  every  hand.  In  the  last  twenty-five  years 
Seoul  has  seen  more  changes  than  any  other  city  in  the 
Far  East,  but  it  has  lost  its  charm  for  "the  old  timer,"  a 
correspondent  laments  in  the  Japan  Mail:  "Sorcerers, 
jugglers,  disease  charmers,  and  fortune-tellers  have  van- 
ished. We  are  to  lose  the  tinted  yangban  and  to  have  in 
its  place  a  modern  city  with  wide  streets,  large  buildings, 
clean  drains,  refreshing  water-works,  tall  horses,  electric 
lights,  and  for  the  average  Korean  a  commoner,  student  or 
working  man — anything  but  showy — making  altogether  a 
wonderful  contrast  with  the  loathsome  alleys,  dreadfully 
smelling  corners,  one-story  buildings,  packs  of  grinning, 
mangy  dogs,  presided  over  by  the  swell  gentleman  in  green 
and  blue  silk,  quilted  and  padded  trousers,  huge  spectacles 
and  waving  fan." 

There  are  other  interesting  places,  not  large,  indeed,  and 
seldom  visited  by  the  traveller  who  is  hurrying  on  the 
railway  from  Japan  to  China,  but  well  worth  a  visit. 
Songdo,  fifty  miles  northeast  of  Seoul,  was  the  capital  of 
Korea  for  over  four  hundred  years  (960-1392).  Its  former 
glory  has  departed,  but  it  is  still  a  place  of  considerable 
note.  It  is  on  the  railway-line  from  Seoul  to  Gensan,  and 
is  the  central  city  of  a  rich  and  populous  region.  Taiku, 
about  a  hundred  miles  north  of  Fusan,  is  a  provincial  cap- 
ital which  the  Japanese  have  made  the  administrative 
centre  of  an  extensive  region  in  southern  Korea.  Andong, 
in  southeastern  Korea,  is  a  fine  old  provincial  capital, 
famous  for  the  number  of  its  Confucian  scholars.  Kangkai, 


THE  LAND  OF  KOREA  19 

in  the  far  northeast,  is  situated  amid  some  of  the  most 
beautiful  scenery  in  Asia.  Haiju  I  have  described  in  an- 
other chapter.  Mokpo,  near  the  southwestern  end  of  the 
peninsula,  is  a  small  place  but  important  on  account  of  its 
excellent  harbor,  and  was  opened  as  a  treaty  port  October 
1,  1897.  Kunsan,  picturesquely  located  near  the  mouth 
of  the  Changpo  River,  about  one  hundred  and  fifty  miles 
south  of  Chemulpo,  was  designated  as  a  treaty  port  May  1, 
1898.  Chunju,  the  family  seat  of  the  last  reigning  dynasty, 
and  the  capital  of  North  Chulla  Province,  is  a  walled  city 
of  25,000  inhabitants.  Chungju  is  the  military  capital  of 
the  North  and  South  Chung  Cheng  provinces,  and  its 
market-place  is  thronged  with  5,000  people  every  five  days. 
Small  cities  and  market  towns,  with  populations  ranging 
from  5,000  to  12,000  each,  are  numerous,  and  villages  are 
innumerable.  Several  places  which  are  of  comparatively 
small  political  or  commercial  importance  are  the  centres 
of  missionary  work  of  large  significance.  I  shall  recur  to 
this  in  a  later  chapter. 


CHAPTER  II 
THE  VANISHED   DAYS  OF  OLD  KOREA 

KOREA  is  among  the  latest  of  the  nations  to  become 
known  to  the  Western  world.  Asia,  indeed,  has  been  more 
or  less  familiar  with  it  from  a  remote  antiquity.  The  en- 
voys of  Persia  met  those  of  Korea  at  the  capital  of  China 
more  than  two  thousand  years  ago,  and  the  contact  must 
have  been  closer  and  more  frequent  than  a  casual  meeting, 
for  "Korean  art  shows  the  undoubted  influence  of  Persia."1 
Enterprising  Arab  merchants,  too,  in  their  trips  to  China, 
early  learned  of  the  great  peninsula,  and  some  of  them 
crossed  the  narrow  sea  between  the  Province  of  Shantung 
and  Korea.  As  far  back  as  the  ninth  century,  Khordadbeh, 
an  Arab  geographer,  referred  to  the  "high  mountains" 
which  "rise  up  densely  across  from  Kantu  in  the  land  of 
Sila,"  and  says  that  "Mussulmans  who  visit  this  country 
often  allow  themselves,  through  the  advantages  of  the  same, 
to  be  induced  to  settle  there."  This  is  undoubtedly  a 
reference  to  Korea,  as  the  Chinese  name  for  that  kingdom 
was  Sinlo,  and  Sila  was  an  easy  Arabic  corruption. 

Of  the  aboriginal  inhabitants  of  Korea  nothing  is  known. 
They  early  became  extinct,  except  in  so  far  as  they  were 
assimilated  by  alien  conquerors.  Modern  Koreans  are 
descendants  of  peoples  that  came  from  the  region  now 
known  as  Manchuria.  They  have  many  quaint  legends 
as  to  their  origin,  most  of  which  go  back  to  mythical  gods 
or  goddesses.  The  most  interesting  traditions  centre  about 
Kija,  or  Ki-tsze,  in  the  twelfth  century  before  the  Christian 
era.  He  was  said  to  be  a  Chinese  mandarin  of  scholarly 
attainments  and  high  character,  who  was  a  counsellor  of 
the  cruel  and  evil-minded  Emperor,  Chow  Sin,  the  last  ruler 

1  William  Elliot  Griffis,  Korea  the  Hermit  Nation,  to  whose  careful  collec- 
tion of  early  historical  material  the  reader  is  referred  for  a  detailed  narrative 
of  events  that  I  have  epitomized  in  this  chapter. 

20 


THE  VANISHED  DAYS  OF  OLD  KOREA  21 

of  the  Shang  dynasty.  The  earnest  efforts  of  Ki-tsze  to 
induce  him  to  rectify  the  gross  abuses  of  his  government 
only  excited  the  wrath  of  the  monarch,  who  brutally  mur- 
dered the  friends  of  Kija,  and  threw  the  sage  himself  into 
prison.  A  revolution  ended  the  sway  of  Chow  Sin,  and  the 
successful  revolutionist,  Wu  Wang,  released  Kija  and 
offered  him  the  post  of  prime  minister.  But  sorely  as 
Ki-tsze  had  suffered  from  the  caprice  of  Chow  Sin,  his  in- 
flexible conscience  recognized  him  as  a  lawful  King,  and 
would  not  permit  him  to  ally  himself  with  a  usurper,  how- 
ever friendly.  So  at  the  head  of  about  5,000  followers,  he 
migrated  in  1122  to  the  northeast,  where  he  founded  a 
kingdom.  Originally  this  kingdom  does  not  appear  to 
have  been  in  Korea  at  all,  but  in  southern  Manchuria. 
It  gradually  extended  its  boundaries  until  its  southern  line 
reached  the  Tatong  River.  The  last  King  of  the  earlier 
Tangun  dynasty  fled  before  the  mighty  Kija,  and  took 
refuge  in  Kuwul  Kuwul  Mountain,  in  Whang-hai  Province, 
where  he  died  in  exile  and  humiliation. 

In  the  second  century  B.  C.,  the  Chinese  emperors  of  the 
Han  dynasty  warred  with  the  descendants  of  Ki-tsze,  and 
after  a  long  and  tumultuous  series  of  victories  and  defeats, 
the  kingdom  was  finally  extinguished,  107  B.  C.,  and  its 
territory  was  annexed  to  China.  The  throneless  kings  of 
the  line  of  Ki-tsze  dwindled  till  9  A.  D.,  when  the  last  one 
died,  and  the  line  became  extinct.  None  of  the  many 
monarchs  of  that  dynasty  of  more  than  a  thousand  years 
left  any  reputation,  except  the  illustrious  founder.  He  has 
several  alleged  graves  north  of  the  Yalu,  where  at  least  the 
greater  part  of  his  reign  was  spent.  The  tomb  at  Pyeng- 
yang,  on  a  hill  a  short  distance  beyond  the  north  wall,  is 
the  one  most  highly  reverenced,  though  there  is  no  reliable 
evidence  that  it  contains  his  body.  A  stone  tablet  on  the 
road  below  bears  an  inscription  to  the  effect  that  those  who 
approach  on  horseback  should  dismount  at  so  sacred  a 
place.  A  beautiful  grove  shades  the  tomb.  Ponderous 
images  guard  the  spot,  and  a  large  flat  stone  serves  for  the 
sacrifices  which  are  offered  to  the  spirit  of  the  mighty  dead. 


22  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

The  story  of  Kija,  however,  is  not  above  suspicion  from 
the  view-point  of  historical  criticism.  The  period  of  Kija 
and  his  successors  (1122  B.  C.-$  A.  D.)  presents  such  a 
jumble  of  facts,  myths,  and  legends  that  it  is  often  im- 
possible to  separate  them.  There  is  nothing  improbable 
hi  the  story  that  a  great  Chinese  mandarin  incurred  the 
wrath  of  his  Emperor,  migrated  to  Korea,  gained  ascen- 
dancy over  the  primitive  people  that  he  found  there,  and 
introduced  a  more  stable  and  civilized  order  among  them. 
But  definite  dates  and  other  important  data  are  uncertain. 
Indeed  it  has  been  conjectured  that  the  kingdom  founded 
by  Kija  was  the  Fuyu,  another  now  forgotten  state.  But 
history  or  legend,  or  both,  one's  imagination  is  kindled  by 
the  story  of  that  ancient  migration  and  its  results,  and  one 
longs  for  details  to  fill  in  its  meagre  outlines.  In  the  days 
of  Samuel,  prophet  of  Israel,  and  Tiglath-Pileser,  King  of 
Assyria,  five  hundred  years  before  Nabopolassar  founded 
the  Chaldean  dynasty,  while  Athens  was  an  obscure  village, 
Rome  was  yet  unheard  of,  and  Europe  was  a  wilderness 
inhabited  only  by  savage  tribes,  this  cultivated  Chinese 
noble  is  said  to  have  laid  the  foundations  of  social  order  in 
northern  Korea.  His  colossal  figure  dominates  the  early 
history  of  Korea  much  as  Abraham  dominates  that  of  the 
Hebrews.  He  is  credited  with  introducing  a  written  lan- 
guage, establishing  stable  government,  enacting  wise  laws, 
and  developing  a  civilization  that  was  high  in  comparison 
with  the  barbarism  he  found.  To  this  day  the  inhabitants 
of  Pyongyang  point  to  a  square  field  as  the  identical  ground 
where  Kija  laid  out  a  model  farm  in  nine  divisions,  the 
people  to  till  eight  for  themselves,  and  the  ninth  for  the 
government.  The  remains  of  the  massive  wall  that  he  is 
supposed  to  have  built  may  still  be  seen,  though  successive 
repairs  and  rebuildings  have  left  little  of  the  original  struc- 
ture. It  follows  the  river  bank  for  miles,  and  indicates  a 
city  of  considerably  larger  size  than  the  present  one. 

It  is  not  surprising  that  the  Koreans  boast  of  their  an- 
tiquity as  one  of  the  oldest  nations  in  the  world.  Novem- 
ber 25,  1801,  the  King  wrote  to  the  Emperor  of  China: 


THE  VANISHED  DAYS  OF  OLD  KOREA     23 

"His  Imperial  Majesty  knows  that  since  the  time  when  the 
remnants  of  the  army  of  the  Yin  dynasty  migrated  to  the 
East  (1122  B.  C.),  the  little  kingdom  has  always  been  dis- 
tinguished by  its  exactness  in  fulfilling  all  that  the  rites 
prescribe,  justice  and  loyalty,  and  in  general  by  fidelity 
to  her  duties." 

January  25,  1802,  an  edict  against  Christianity  declared 
that  "the  Kingdom  granted  to  Ki-tsze  has  enjoyed  great 
peace  during  four  hundred  years  (since  the  establishment 
of  the  ruling  dynasty),  in  all  the  extent  of  its  territory  of 
two  thousand  ri  and  more";  and  when  the  American  ad- 
miral, John  Rodgers,  tried  to  make  a  treaty  in  1871,  the 
Korean  Government  proudly  replied  that  "Korea  was 
satisfied  with  her  civilization  of  four  thousand  years,  and 
wanted  no  other." 

While  Ki-tsze  was  doubtless  the  civilizer  and  lawgiver 
of  early  Korea,  it  is  not  at  all  certain  that  the  Koreans  of 
to-day  should  regard  him  as  the  founder  of  their  na- 
tion. Rather  do  we  look  to  the  people  called  Korai, 
who  originally  came  from  a  region  north  of  the  Sungari 
River,  in  what  is  now  known  as  Manchuria.  Various  mi- 
grations from  this  region,  led  by  powerful  chieftains,  re- 
sulted in  the  development  of  the  petty  kingdoms  of  Korai, 
Shinra,  and  Hiaksai,  and  for  centuries  the  history  of  the 
country  largely  centred  in  their  courts,  their  wars  with  one 
another  and  with  China,  and  their  changing  boundaries 
as  the  tides  of  victory  and  defeat  ebbed  and  flowed.  By 
the  seventh  century  Korai  had  gained  the  mastery  from  the 
Sea  of  Japan  to  the  Liao  River,  and  of  the  peninsula  down 
to  the  Han  River.  The  five  provinces  of  the  kingdom  con- 
tained millions  of  people,  and  there  were  no  less  than  a 
hundred  and  seventy-six  cities.  The  warfare  between 
Korai  and  Shinra  was  chronic,  but  the  doughty  Koraians 
would  have  held  their  own  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  Chinese, 
whose  succeeding  invasions  proved  overwhelming,  and  after 
a  history  of  more  than  seven  hundred  years  the  kingdom 
of  Korai  was  annexed  to  China. 

To  Hiaksai  Korea  is  indebted  for  the  introduction  of  the 


24  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

writings  of  Mencius  and  Confucius,  and  the  literary  cul- 
ture that  they  fostered  easily  made  Hiaksai  the  intellectual 
centre  of  the  peninsula.  In  the  fifth  century  the  kingdom 
had  become  strong  enough  to  defeat  a  Chinese  army;  but 
internecine  strife  and  constant  wars  with  border  kingdoms 
and  with  the  powerful  and  usually  victorious  Chinese  grad- 
ually weakened  the  people,  until,  in  the  sixth  century, 
the  devastated  land  became  a  part  of  the  Celestial  Empire. 

Shinra  was  a  proud  kingdom  whose  people  were  for  a 
time  farther  advanced  in  civilization  than  any  other  people 
of  ancient  Korea.  They  cultivated  the  arts,  built  walls 
around  their  cities,  fortified  strategic  posts,  used  horses, 
oxen,  and  wagons,  made  silk,  smelted  ore,  manufactured 
iron,  and  traded  with  other  kingdoms,  including  Japan. 
In  the  days  of  its  greatest  power  Shinra  occupied  all  the 
eastern  half  of  Korea,  from  the  Ever  White  Mountains  in 
the  north  to  the  southernmost  point  of  the  peninsula. 
Its  Chinese  origin  and  occasional  alliances  with  the  Chinese 
Empire  brought  to  it  the  principles  and  benefits  of  Chinese 
civilization,  while  its  nearness  to  Japan  and,  for  a  time,  its 
subjugation  by  the  Japanese  opened  to  it  whatever  advan- 
tages the  Japan  of  that  day  possessed;  and  they  were  not 
small.  Shinra  was  the  last  of  the  three  kingdoms  to  fall.  For 
two  centuries  after  Hiaksai  and  Korai  had  been  conquered 
by  China,  Shinra  continued  to  exist,  though  civil  war 
sadly  diminished  its  power.  Altogether,  the  kingdom  of 
Shinra  lasted  nearly  a  thousand  years,  and  her  three  royal 
families  boasted  fifty-five  kings.  But  in  934  the  end  came. 

The  next  great  wave  of  population  to  reach  and  influ- 
ence Korea  emanated  from  that  mysterious  fountainhead 
of  nations,  northern  Manchuria  and  Mongolia.  Forth  from 
this  region  there  poured  in  the  latter  part  of  the  ninth  and 
the  early  part  of  the  tenth  centuries  the  fierce  hordes  of 
the  Kitan  tribes,  breaking  up  the  kingdom  of  Puhai,  which 
had  been  founded  in  700  A.  D.,  and  whose  capital  was  the 
still  important  city  of  Kirin.  Multitudes  of  the  defeated 
people  of  Puhai  emigrated  southward  and  repopulated  the 
devastated  valleys  of  northern  Korea.  The  infusion  of  new 


THE  VANISHED  DAYS  OF  OLD  KOREA     25 

blood  brought  vigor  to  a  race  which  was  fast  becoming 
decadent,  and  with  comparative  ease  the  ambitious  soldier- 
king,  Wang-ken,  brought  all  Korea  under  his  sway,  and 
fixed  his  capital  at  Sunto  (Kai-seng).  Thus  for  the  first 
time  the  whole  peninsula  was  united  under  one  government. 
Wang-ken  died  in  945,  but  the  dynasty  that  he  founded 
endured  for  four  centuries,  and  Sunto  became  a  centre  of 
wealth  and  learning,  enjoying  its  dignity  as  the  residence 
of  the  royal  family  till  the  fall  of  the  dynasty,  in  1392. 
For  a  time  the  kingdom  included  not  only  the  whole  of 
modern  Korea,  but  a  considerable  region  north  of  the 
Yalu.  But  wars  with  the  Emperor  of  Kitan  resulted,  in  the 
early  part  of  the  eleventh  century,  in  the  loss  of  the  Man- 
churian  territory.  From  that  time,  the  Yalu  remained  the 
boundary  of  Korea,  and  to-day,  after  the  lapse  of  nearly  a 
thousand  years,  the  bounds  of  Korea  remain  unchanged. 

In  the  thirteenth  century  Korea  felt  the  bloody  hand  of 
one  of  the  mightiest  of  world  conquerors.  Few  names  in 
history  are  identified  with  more  thrilling  and  yet  more 
tragic  events  than  the  dread  name  of  Genghis  Khan.  He 
also  came  from  that  breeding  place  of  invaders,  Mongolia. 
A  Japanese  writer,  K.  Suyematz,  claims  that  Genghis  Khan 
was  none  other  than  the  Japanese  warrior  and  hero,  Yo- 
shitsune",  who  was  born  in  1159,  became  the  general  who 
conquered  the  Taira  family,  and  having  incurred  the 
jealousy  of  his  brother  Yoritomo,  fled  to  Manchuria,  where 
his  commanding  talents  made  him  the  chief  of  the  fierce 
and  predatory  Mongol  tribes.  Be  this  as  it  may,  in  1206 
a  great  chief  of  the  Mongols  named  Yezokai,  who  had  uni- 
fied and  led  to  repeated  triumphs  the  hitherto  disorganized 
bands  of  northern  horsemen,  proclaimed  himself  King  under 
the  name  of  Genghis  Khan  and  began  a  career  of  conquest. 
In  half  a  decade  he  had  subdued  the  warlike  Kitans,  and 
by  1213  the  Great  Wall  of  China  was  pierced  and  his  hosts 
were  masters  of  everything  north  of  the  Yalu.  With  the 
lust  for  power  now  fully  roused,  Genghis  Khan  conceived 
the  bold  idea  of  conquering  the  world.  How  his  invincible 
and  terrible  horsemen  swept  over  China  and  clear  across 


26  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

Asia  to  Europe,  carrying  consternation  and  ruin  wherever 
they  went,  every  student  of  history  knows.  But  less  has 
been  written  of  the  division  of  the  Mongol  host  which 
sought  to  carry  out  the  ambition  of  Genghis  Khan  in  Korea 
and  Japan.  The  former  was  an  easy  prey,  and  in  1218  the 
King  of  Korea  became  a  vassal  of  Genghis  Khan.  The 
murder  of  a  Mongol  envoy,  in  1231,  led  to  an  invasion  in 
which  Korea  suffered  heavily.  The  Mongol  officials  were 
so  severe  in  their  rule  that  even  Korean  patience  was  ex- 
hausted, and  they  were  assassinated.  Thereupon  another 
Mongol  army  came  in  1241,  and  inflicted  such  dire  ven- 
geance that  the  prostrate  nation  made  no  further  resistance. 
The  repeated  efforts  to  conquer  Japan,  made  by  Genghis 
Khan  and  his  famous  grandson  Khu-blai  Khan,  were  less 
successful,  and  the  Mongol  occupation  of  Korea  was  brief, 
as  the  empire  of  Genghis  Khan,  like  that  of  the  world- 
ambitious  Alexander  the  Great,  fell  to  pieces  soon  after 
the  death  of  his  successor.  From  the  view-point  of  history, 
the  subjugation  of  Korea  by  Genghis  Khan  was  merely  an 
episode,  terrible  at  the  time,  but  leaving  no  appreciable 
mark  on  Korean  customs  or  institutions. 

The  modern  Korean  dynasty  dates  from  the  fall  of  the 
Wang  dynasty,  in  1392.  The  last  King  of  that  line  was  so 
cruel  and  dissolute  that  his  subjects  became  restless  and 
sullen.  When  he  incurred  the  anger  of  China  by  refusing 
to  give  pledges  of  vassalage,  Ni  Taijo,  the  ambitious  and 
talented  general  of  the  army  and  the  father-in-law  of  the 
King,  took  advantage  of  the  opportunity  to  depose  him. 
Prompt  acknowledgment  of  the  suzerainty  of  China  secured 
the  friendship  and  support  of  the  Emperor,  and  Ni  Taijo 
was  soon  firmly  established  on  the  throne,  to  the  joy  of  the 
Koreans,  with  whom  he  was  very  popular.  The  capital 
was  transferred  to  Han  Yang,  which  took  the  name  Seoul. 
The  King  built  the  wall  which  still  stands,  improved  the 
administration  of  government,  and  divided  the  country  into 
the  eight  provinces,  or  do,  whose  boundaries  have  remained 
to  this  day.  The  name  Korea,  or  "Morning  Calm,"  which 
had  been  dropped  during  the  troubled  period  which  began 


THE  VANISHED  DAYS  OF  OLD  KOREA     27 

with  the  Christian  era,  was  resumed,  and  Korea  entered 
upon  an  era  of  peace  and  prosperity.  The  descendants  of 
Ni  Taijo  ruled  in  uninterrupted  succession  until  the  annexa- 
tion of  Korea  by  Japan,  in  1910,  and  the  last  Emperor 
proudly  traced  his  lineage  back  to  him,  although  he  was  not 
in  the  direct  line  of  descent. 

Old  Korea  was  feudal.  There  was  no  such  caste  system 
as  in  India,  but  society  was  rigidly  divided  into  various 
grades:  the  royal  family,  nobles,  officials  and  literary  men, 
farmers,  and  artisans.  The  lowest  class  was  subdivided 
into  "the  seven  vile  callings"  of  merchants,  boatmen,  jail- 
ers, postal-slaves,  monks,  butchers,  and  sorcerers.  While 
the  merchant  was  at  the  head  of  the  latter  list,  he  belonged 
to  one  of  the  "vile  callings,"  on  the  lowest  round  of  the 
social  ladder,  and  the  monk  was  even  nearer  the  bottom, 
only  the  butcher  and  sorcerer  being  below  him. 

The  government  was  a  despotism  of  the  patriarchal  type. 
The  Emperor  was  believed  to  rule  by  divine  right  and  to 
be  above  wrong-doing.  All  abuses  were  charged  to  the 
ministers  and  subordinate  officials  who  failed  to  do  the 
will  of  the  sovereign.  There  was  an  official  censor  whose 
alleged  duty  it  was  to  call  the  royal  attention  to  evils,  but 
he  would  have  been  badly  overworked  if  he  had  faithfully 
performed  his  duties;  and  even  then,  such  is  the  Asiatic 
fondness  for  hyperbole  and  self-depreciation,  his  writings 
would  not  have  been  seriously  applied  to  the  divinity  on 
the  throne,  if  indeed  his  Majesty  ever  saw  them. 

The  person  of  the  Emperor  was  sacred,  and  by  immemorial 
tradition,  iron  must  never  be  permitted  to  touch  it.  It  is 
said  that  King  Cheng- jong  died  of  an  abscess  in  the  year 
1800  because  it  was  not  thought  proper  that  steel  should 
be  used  to  lance  it.  No  one  was  permitted  to  ride  past  the 
palace.  No  matter  how  high  the  dignitary,  he  must  leave 
his  chair  or  dismount  from  his  pony  and  walk.  When  his 
Majesty  left  the  royal  precincts  extraordinary  efforts  were 
made  to  guard  his  person.  The  old  Emperor  probably  did 
not  know  how  filthy  and  wretched  the  streets  of  his  capital 
were,  for  he  saw  them  only  at  rare  intervals  after  they  had 


28  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

been  carefully  cleaned  for  his  passage.  He  would  not  have 
cared  much  if  he  had  known,  for  his  own  grounds  would 
have  given  a  Dutch  or  Yankee  housewife  nervous  prostra- 
tion. It  was  "lese-majesty"  for  any  one  to  look  down 
upon  the  Emperor,  and  in  order  to  prevent  this  the  windows 
of  the  houses  upon  the  street  through  which  the  Emperor 
passed  were  carefully  sealed  so  that  no  one  could  peer 
through  them.  Every  door  had  to  be  closed,  and  the  owner 
of  each  house  was  required  to  kneel  in  front  of  it  with  a 
broom  and  dust-pan  as  evidences  that  he  recognized  the 
august  presence,  and  that  he  had  made  every  effort  to  pre- 
pare for  his  coming.  In  order  to  lessen  the  risk  of  assas- 
sination, the  procession  included  two  sedan-chairs  precisely 
alike,  and  no  one  except  his  confidential  attendants  was 
supposed  to  know  in  which  one  the  Emperor  rode.  These 
royal  processions  were  attended  by  all  the  pomp  and  para- 
phernalia so  dear  to  the  Oriental  mind,  and  to  the  Occi- 
dental, too,  for  that  matter. 

The  old  Emperor  came  to  the  throne  on  the  death  of  his 
uncle,  King  Chul-chong,  who  died  without  issue,  January 
15,  1864.  The  new  sovereign  being  a  boy  of  twelve,  a 
Council  of  Regency  was  headed  by  his  father,  Ni  Kung, 
or,  as  he  was  commonly  known,  the  Tai-wen-kun.  The 
latter  was  a  man  of  unusual  strength  of  character  for  a 
Korean,  and  he  speedily  made  himself  master  of  the  situa- 
tion, and  was  the  virtual  ruler  till  1873.  Koreans  still 
shudder  as  they  remember  his  sanguinary  career,  as  a  man 
"who  had  bowels  of  iron  and  a  heart  of  stone."  His 
regency  was  characterized  not  only  by  the  usual  corrup- 
tion but  by  ruthless  slaughter.  He  even  executed  one  of 
his  own  sons.  He  was  fiercely  anti-foreign  and  was  re- 
sponsible for  the  murder  of  the  French  Catholic  mission- 
aries and  Christians  in  1866.  When  the  King  attained  his 
majority,  in  1873,  the  regency  of  course  ended,  but  the 
belligerent  Tai-wen-kun  remained  a  power  in  the  capital 
and  was  the  source  of  all  sorts  of  nefarious  conspiracies. 
He  plotted  several  times  to  depose  his  son.  He  was  at  the 
bottom  of  the  attack  upon  the  Japanese  legation  in  1882. 


THE  VANISHED  DAYS  OF  OLD  KOREA     29 

When  he  wanted  his  enemies  at  court  removed,  he  adopted 
the  pleasant  expedient  of  concealing  bombs  in  boxes  of 
bonbons.  His  enemies  once  retaliated  by  trying  to  blow 
him  up,  but  the  effort  was  a  failure.  If  he  had  been  as  just 
and  humane  as  he  was  able  and  energetic,  he  would  have 
been  a  power  for  good.  As  it  was,  he  was  a  disturbing  ele- 
ment until  the  feebleness  of  age  deprived  him  of  the  ability 
to  foment  further  mischief. 

The  youthful  King  soon  proved  to  be  a  weak  and  self- 
indulgent  man,  who  was  easily  dominated  by  the  minister, 
wife,  or  concubine  who  happened  to  be  the  favorite  at  a 
particular  time.  He  was  naturally  a  man  of  gentle  spirit, 
well  versed  in  the  history  and  literature  of  his  country,  and 
kindly  disposed  toward  foreigners.  Like  most  weak  des- 
pots, he  was  apt  to  be  cruel  when  frightened. 

I  was  favored  with  an  opportunity  to  see  him  in  1901, 
and  also  his  son,  then  the  Crown  Prince,  and  afterward  the 
Emperor.  I  owed  the  opportunity  to  the  American  Min- 
ister, the  Honorable  Horace  Allen,  whom  the  King  held  in 
high  regard.  Unfortunately,  the  time  fixed  was  the  evening 
of  the  day  on  which  our  steamer  was  to  sail  from  Chemulpo. 
As  I  was  near  the  beginning  of  a  journey  of  over  a  year 
whose  itinerary  had  been  carefully  planned,  and  as  im- 
portant engagements  in  China  were  involved,  I  felt  that  I 
could  not  disarrange  my  whole  schedule  even  to  meet  an 
Emperor.  I  was  therefore  indiscreet  enough  to  say  to 
Minister  Allen  that,  while  I  should  highly  appreciate  the 
privilege  of  entering  the  august  presence  of  his  Majesty, 
to  my  profound  regret  it  would  be  impossible  as  I  had 
made  all  my  plans  to  leave  on  the  forenoon  of  that  day. 
The  experienced  diplomat  replied  in  some  consternation: 
"  Look  here,  you  are  not  in  America,  but  in  Asia,  and  when 
an  Asiatic  monarch  intimates  that  he  will  deign  to  receive 
a  certain  person  at  a  certain  hour,  that  person  is  to  be  re- 
ceived at  that  precise  hour,  and  a  little  matter  like  losing 
a  steamer  and  waiting  an  indefinite  period  for  another  one 
is  not  to  be  considered  for  a  moment.  An  invitation  of  the 
Emperor  is  law."  There  was  a  hurried  consultation,  the 


30  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

result  of  which  was  that  a  friend  went  to  Chemulpo  to  see 
whether  anything  could  be  done  with  the  steamer.  This 
friend,  in  the  kindness  of  his  heart  and  with  his  knowledge 
that  time  is  not  of  much  account  to  an  Oriental,  gave  the 
captain  such  an  idea  of  the  importance  of  my  humble  self 
and  the  appalling  discourtesy  to  the  Emperor  that  would 
be  involved  in  leaving  his  guest  in  the  lurch,  that  the  cap- 
tain actually  held  his  ship  until  the  next  day.  When  he 
saw  me  at  that  time  he  was  very  polite  and  made  no  com- 
plaint, but  I  fear  that  his  thoughts  were  not  pleasant. 

And  so  at  the  appointed  hour  we  presented  ourselves  at 
the  gate  of  the  royal  palace,  accompanied  by  the  Reverend 
Doctor  and  Mrs.  H.  G.  Underwood,  and  Doctor  and  Mrs. 
0.  R.  Avison,  missionaries  whom  the  King  knew  and 
respected.  An  officer  escorted  us  through  files  of  soldiers 
and  a  labyrinth  of  low,  rambling  buildings,  some  of  native 
construction,  others  of  foreign  style,  through  courtyards 
bare  of  grass  and  tramped  hard  by  many  feet,  until  we  were 
ushered  into  a  one-story  brick  structure  of  European  archi- 
tecture, which  we  were  informed  was  the  reception-hall, 
where  we  were  offered  tea  and  cigarettes  by  the  master  of 
court  ceremonies,  and  then  were  escorted  to  the  building 
where  the  Emperor  and  the  Crown  Prince  were  to  receive  us. 

Not  being  accustomed  to  hobnobbing  with  royalty,  I 
had  sought  advice  in  advance  as  to  the  proper  method  of 
approach  to  his  Majesty.  We  were  counselled  to  pause 
on  the  threshold  and  make  a  low  bow,  advance  a  step  and 
•make  another  low  bow,  take  a  further  step  and  make  still 
another  bow,  take  a  third  step  and  bend  low  once  more, 
and  then  stand  still  and  see  what  his  Majesty  would  be 
pleased  to  do.  We  carefully  followed  these  instructions, 
and  his  Majesty  was  pleased  to  give  the  men  of  our  party 
a  slight  nod,  and  to  shake  hands  most  effusively  with  our 
wives — which  showed  that  he  was  a  man  of  sufficient  dis- 
cernment to  recognize  instantly  the  more  worthy  members 
of  our  respective  families. 

The  audience-chamber  was  scantily  furnished,  the  only 
articles  in  it  being  a  carpet  and  a  small  table.  Ordinary 


THE  VANISHED  DAYS  OF  OLD  KOREA     31 

paper  covered  the  walls,  and  there  was  a  total  lack  of  that 
gorgeousness  which  is  supposed  to  characterize  the  audience- 
chamber  of  an  Oriental  monarch.  The  Emperor  was  then 
fifty  years  of  age,  rather  short,  inclined  to  stoutness,  wore  a 
thin  beard,  and  had  a  face  which,  when  lighted  by  a  smile, 
as  it  was  several  times  during  the  interview,  was  not  un- 
attractive. The  Crown  Prince  spoke  little,  and  appeared 
to  be  much  inferior  to  his  father  in  intelligence.  A  life 
spent  amid  the  intrigues  and  vices  of  a  Korean  palace  was 
not  conducive  to  the  development  of  strong  qualities. 

The  Emperor  politely  asked  each  of  us  if  we  were  well, 
and  after  an  interview  of  about  half  an  hour,  during  which 
he  conversed  freely  and  pleasantly,  he  said  that  he  had 
prepared  a  little  dinner  and  that  he  hoped  we  would  re- 
main as  his  guests,  the  master  of  ceremonies  representing 
him  at  the  table.  (The  Emperor  never  eats  with  foreigners.) 
He  again  shook  hands  with  the  ladies  of  the  party,  and  then 
we  backed  out  of  the  royal  presence  with  the  prescribed  bows 
until  we  had  passed  the  door. 

The  dinner  was  served  in  another  plain  room,  with  low 
ceiling  and  common-looking  wall-paper,  but  the  table  was 
set  with  snowy  linen,  exquisite  china,  and  costly  gold  and 
silver  dishes.  Each  guest's  plate  was  marked  by  a  card 
in  Chinese  characters.  The  food  was  perfectly  cooked, 
and  the  thirteen  courses  were  admirably  served.  We  were 
told  that  the  Emperor  had  a  French  chef,  and  we  could 
easily  believe  it.  Four  Koreans  dined  with  us  and  were 
very  polite  and  cordial.  The  one  beside  whom  I  sat  was 
of  princely  rank  and  had  visited  America  and  Europe. 
He  spoke  English  fluently,  and  I  found  him  a  most  agree- 
able conversationalist.  I  was  interested  in  noting  that 
while  five  kinds  of  wine  were  served,  only  two  persons  at 
the  table  drank  it,  all  the  others  contenting  themselves 
with  Tansan,  a  Japanese  mineral  water. 

After  dinner  we  were  taken  to  the  drawing-rooms  of  the 
palace  where  we  were  entertained  by  a  special  programme. 
First  appeared  dancing  lions,  each  consisting  of  two  men 
under  huge  lion  skins.  The  heads  had  been  made  of  dis- 


32  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

proportionate  size,  with  eyes  as  large  as  saucers  and  eyelids 
which  were  operated  by  a  string  worked  from  the  inside. 
When  the  lions  stood  before  us  and  bowed,  and  those  great 
saucer-like  lids  slowly  winked,  the  effect  was  decidedly 
grotesque.  After  the  lions,  forty  dancing-girls  of  the  palace 
entered  and  gave  an  exhibition  of  their  art  to  the  missionary 
secretary  and  his  wife  from  the  far  West.  Everything,  how- 
ever, was  decorous.  Indeed  it  would  hardly  be  called  a 
dance  by  Americans,  consisting  of  a  series  of  slow,  swaying 
motions  more  nearly  resembling  callisthenic  exercises,  the 
arms  gracefully  waved,  and  the  steps  slow  and  measured. 
The  reputation  of  dancing-girls  in  Korea  is  not  good,  but 
these  were  modestly  dressed  and  their  conduct  was  unex- 
ceptionable. Their  faces  were  thickly  painted  and  their 
hair  was  done  up  in  most  elaborate  fashion.  One  of  their 
exercises  was  the  throwing  of  balls  through  a  hole  in  a 
frame,  each  girl  as  she  took  her  turn  slowly  swaying  her 
arms  and  her  body  to  the  sound  of  the  orchestra,  and  then 
at  the  climax  of  the  music  attempting  to  throw  the  ball 
through  the  hole.  If  she  succeeded,  she  retired  with  evi- 
dent pleasure;  if  she  failed,  an  attendant  darted  forward 
and  painted  a  black  spot  upon  her  cheek,  a  mark  of  dis- 
grace. The  last  of  the  dances  was  a  sword-dance,  and  as 
it  proceeded  the  music  became  more  rapid  until  the  dance 
ended  in  a  dizzy  whirl.  By  the  time  the  entertainment 
was  concluded  it  was  ten  o'clock,  and  we  took  our  departure, 
having  spent  four  hours  in  the  palace. 

The  easy-going  King  paid  little  attention  to  affairs  of 
state,  and  the  real  government  was  in  the  hands  of  the 
Cabinet  ministers  and  their  subordinates.  Some  of  these 
officials  were  hereditary  nobles  whose  power  had  grown 
great  under  the  feudal  system.  Others  were  men  who  had 
obtained  their  posts  by  bribery  or  special  influence.  Offices 
were  supposed  to  be  obtained,  as  in  China,  by  competitive 
examinations,  but  in  practice  they  were  virtually  sold  to 
the  highest  bidder  or  given  to  favorites.  Sometimes  an 
official  resigned  a  few  days  after  his  appointment,  as  he  had 
sought  the  place  only  for  the  rank  which  even  a  brief  ten- 


THE  VANISHED  DAYS  OF  OLD  KOREA     33 

ure  enabled  him  to  claim  for  the  rest  of  his  life,  or  to  foist 
some  of  his  poor  relations  upon  the  public  purse.  The 
number  of  officials  and  their  retainers  was  almost  incredible, 
the  average  district  mandarin  having  four  hundred  subor- 
dinates, who  did  little  but  collect  taxes,  loaf,  and  eat  so 
gluttonously  and  cheat  so  brazenly  that,  a  British  vice- 
consul  told  Mrs.  Bishop,  their  food  alone  cost  $392,000  a 
year  in  a  single  one  of  the  forty-four  districts. 

The  nobles,  or  yangbans,  as  they  were  called,  were  ab- 
normally proud  of  characteristics  of  which  a  self-respecting 
American  would  be  ashamed.  The  physical  strength  of 
the  yangban  was  usually  weak,  as  his  life  was  one  of  self- 
indulgence  and  absence  of  healthful  exercise,  but  he  deemed 
it  essential  to  his  dignity  to  give  beholders  the  impression 
that  he  was  weaker  than  he  really  was,  so  that  he  would 
not  be  suspected  of  ever  having  done  any  work.  Accord- 
ingly he  staggered  out  of  his  house  and  sank  into  the  arms 
of  his  attendants  as  if  he  had  taxed  his  energies  to  the 
utmost  in  walking  a  few  steps.  The  obsequious  attendants 
tenderly  placed  him  on  the  back  of  the  pony,  and  then  held 
each  leg  in  order  that  the  precious  body  of  the  dignitary 
might  not  be  subjected  to  too  much  strain  as  he  was  borne 
through  the  streets.  Canopies  or  great  umbrellas  were 
held  over  his  devoted  head.  Servants  ran  before  him 
knocking  the  vulgar  crowd  out  of  the  way,  ordering  every 
other  rider  to  dismount,  and  unmercifully  belaboring  any 
one  who  was  slow  about  it,  or  any  pedestrian  who  dared  to 
pass  in  front  of  the  procession.  Another  attendant  osten- 
tatiously carried  a  cuspidor,  while  other  attendants  carried 
pipes,  tobacco,  cigarettes,  and  other  conveniences  to  an- 
ticipate his  slightest  wish. 

The  life  of  the  individual  Korean  was  spent  under  con- 
stant official  espionage.  Unless  he  was  a  noble,  he  must 
have  a  tablet  bearing  his  name  and  residence  so  that  he 
could  be  identified  at  any  time.  If  he  was  accused  of 
crime,  and  he  was  so  accused  on  the  slightest  pretext,  he 
was  brought  before  the  magistrate  who  was  both  judge 
and  jury,  and  usually  lazy,  corrupt,  and  cruel.  If  the  cul- 


34  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

prit  did  not  confess  that  he  had  committed  the  alleged 
crime,  he  was  subjected  to  torture.  Every  court  had  an 
appalling  array  of  paraphernalia  for  this  purpose — clubs, 
paddles,  stocks,  chains,  ropes,  and  manacles.  The  un- 
happy prisoner  was  sometimes  beaten  until  his  back  was 
torn  to  ribbons,  or  perhaps  he  was  hung  up  by  the  arms, 
or  was  rolled  about  with  his  hands  fastened  to  his  knees. 
Breaking  the  shin-bones  with  clubs  was  a  common  mode 
of  torture.  Prior  to  1785  more  frightful  modes  of  punish- 
ment were  in  common  use,  such  as  the  tearing  the  body 
apart  by  oxen;  but  in  that  year  a  new  criminal  code  was 
put  in  force  that  abolished  some  of  the  worst  abuses.  Those 
that  still  prevailed  were  so  great  as  to  shock  a  white  man, 
though  he  need  not  go  many  generations  back  into  the  his- 
tory of  his  own  ancestors  to  find  equal  cruelties. 

Under  such  a  government  the  common  people  suffered 
grievously.  They  had  no  rights  which  their  rulers  felt 
bound  to  respect.  The  taxes  would  have  been  heavy  enough 
if  they  had  been  honestly  collected,  but  dishonesty  more 
than  doubled  them.  Corrupt  and  unscrupulous  officials 
extorted  as  much  as  possible  from  the  helpless  masses. 
Fixed  salaries  were  seldom  paid,  and  adequate  ones  never, 
so  that  "squeezing"  was  expected  as  a  matter  of  course. 
If  an  official  turned  the  required  amount  into  the  imperial 
treasury  no  questions  were  asked  regarding  the  additional 
sum  which  he  kept  for  himself.  As  this  system  of  graft  ran 
down  a  long  line  of  officials  of  varying  ranks  until  it  reached 
the  taxpayer,  the  plight  of  that  unfortunate  individual 
may  be  imagined.  He  was  lucky  if  he  had  enough  left  for 
his  family  to  eat.  An  illustration  of  their  methods  was  given 
in  a  village  in  a  southern  province  where  telegraph-poles 
were  required.  "The  provincial  governor  made  a  requisi- 
tion of  100  cash  on  every  house.  The  local  magistrate  in- 
creased it  to  200,  and  his  runners  to  250,  which  was  actually 
paid  by  the  people;  the  runners  getting  50  cash,  the  magis- 
trate 100,  and  the  governor  100,  a  portion  of  which  sum 
was  expended  on  the  object  for  which  it  was  levied."  1 

1  Cited  by  Bishop  in  Korea  and  Her  Neighbors,  p.  329. 


THE  VANISHED  DAYS  OF  OLD  KOREA     35 

Any  man  suspected  of  having  property  was  liable  to  be 
thrown  into  a  filthy  prison  on  some  trumped-up  charge, 
and  held  and  perhaps  tortured  until  he  disgorged  to  the 
magistrate.  The  privilege  of  collecting  taxes  was  sold  to 
the  highest  bidder  or  given  to  dissipated  favorites  who 
divided  the  spoil.  The  courts  gave  no  redress,  for  the 
plunderer  himself  was  usually  both  judge  and  jury.  A 
man  had  no  incentive  to  toil  when  he  knew  that  the  fruits 
of  endeavor  would  be  taken  from  him  by  lynx-eyed  officials. 
So  he  cultivated  only  the  rice  and  beans  that  he  required 
for  food,  and  devoted  the  remainder  of  his  time  to  smoking 
and  resting. 

During  our  journey  through  the  interior,  we  stopped 
one  night  with  an  intelligent-looking  Korean  who  lived  in 
a  modest  house,  kept  one  ox,  and  tilled  a  few  acres  of  land. 
My  missionary  companion,  knowing  him  well,  said  to  him : 
"Why  do  you  not  build  a  better  house,  keep  more  oxen, 
and  cultivate  more  land ? "  "Hush,"  replied  the  frightened 
Korean,  "it  is  not  safe  even  to  whisper  such  things,  for  if 
they  were  to  come  to  the  ears  of  the  magistrate,  I  should  be 
persecuted  until  he  extorted  from  me  the  last  yen  that  I 
possess."  Wherever  we  went  we  heard  substantially  the 
same  story  and  saw  substantially  the  same  conditions — a 
rapacious  and  dissolute  governing  class,  and  a  shabby  im- 
provident people  who  lived  from  hand  to  mouth  and 
hardly  dared  call  their  souls  their  own.  The  prevailing 
wretchedness  was  so  great  that  one  wondered  how  long 
human  nature  could  endure  it.  Anglo-Saxons  would  not 
have  tolerated  it  a  month.  But  these  stolid  Oriental 
grown-up  children  ate  their  rice  and  took  their  hard  lot 
apathetically,  while  the  Emperor  borrowed  money  or  sold 
concessions,  and  the  officials  stole  to  keep  up  appearances. 
Few  of  the  higher  classes  appeared  to  discern  the  coming 
storm,  and  those  who  did  shrugged  their  shoulders  in  the 
spirit  of  "after  us  the  deluge." 

Against  foreign  aggressions  Korea  was  utterly  helpless. 
The  army  of  about  17,000  men  was  ostensibly  modelled 
after  European  standards,  but  no  European  officer  would 


36  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

have  been  willing  to  assume  responsibility  for  such  an 
army.  In  1896  a  Russian  colonel,  assisted  by  three  com- 
missioned officers  and  ten  non-commissioned  officers,  un- 
dertook to  bring  some  order  out  of  the  chaos.  He  organ- 
ized a  royal  body-guard  of  1,000  men,  and  armed  them  with 
Berdan  rifles.  But  he  and  his  officers  were  displaced  in 
April,  1898.  The  army  as  a  whole  was  about  the  worst 
equipped  and  worst  disciplined  body  imaginable.  The  sol- 
diers slouched  about  in  most  unmilitary  fashion.  Their 
valor  was  tested  by  Mr.  J.  McLeavy  Brown,  a  British  sub- 
ject who  was  formerly  commissioner  of  maritime  customs. 
In  addition  to  the  duties  of  this  office  he  became  financial 
adviser  to  the  treasury  in  1895,  and  a  royal  edict  issued  in 
July,  1896,  gave  him  control  of  all  disbursements.  His 
post  was  a  trying  one,  for  the  Korean  officials  with  whom 
he  dealt  were  prolific  in  schemes  for  robbing  the  treasury. 
But  Mr.  Brown  was  not  only  incorruptible  but  fearless, 
and  under  his  honest  and  skilful  management  the  financial 
condition  of  the  government  rapidly  improved.  The  Rus- 
sians and  French,  finding  him  an  obstacle  to  their  plans, 
succeeded  in  persuading  the  Emperor  to  depose  him.  But 
Mr.  Brown  refused  to  be  deposed.  A  detachment  of  Korean 
troops  was  therefore  sent  to  eject  him;  whereupon  the  re- 
doubtable Scotch-Irishman,  with  a  vigorous  use  of  a  light 
cane  and  a  heavy  boot,  put  the  whole  detachment  to 
ignominious  flight  in  spite  of  its  loaded  rifles  and  fixed 
bayonets.  When  the  army  was  mustered  out  by  the  Japa- 
nese after  they  had  taken  control  of  the  government,  the 
military  establishment  consisted  of  thirty  generals,  ten 
colonels,  and  a  few  nondescript  regiments  of  slouchy  and 
unkempt  soldiers. 

The  navy — but  it  is  hardly  proper  to  apply  the  word 
navy  to  a  variegated  assortment  of  twenty-eight  admirals, 
a  few  sailors,  and  no  war- vessels  at  all. 

The  diplomatic  service  was,  on  the  whole,  better  than 
might  have  been  expected  hi  such  circumstances;  perhaps 
because  most  of  the  yangbans  were  too  stupid  to  know 
anything  about  other  countries,  or  too  lazy  to  care  about 


THE  VANISHED  DAYS  OF  OLD  KOREA     37 

going  to  them,  so  that  the  posts  at  foreign  capitals  went 
to  the  more  ambitious  men.  They  were  rather  helpless 
figures  abroad.  The  government  which  they  represented 
manifested  only  languid  interest  in  them,  and  often  left 
them  for  long  periods  without  salaries  or  allowances. 
More  than  once  the  Korean  Minister  in  Washington  was 
unable  to  pay  his  grocer,  and  the  correspondence  of  several 
dignitaries  in  Europe  and  America  was  burdened  with 
pathetic  appeals  for  money  to  meet  unpaid  bills  of  long 
standing  and  thus  preserve  the  government's  honor.  The 
whole  administration  was  corrupt  and  impotent.  But  it 
did  not  trouble  the  Koreans.  It  was  the  only  kind  of 
government  that  they  had  known  for  centuries,  and  they 
accepted  it  as  a  matter  of  course.  As  for  the  Emperor,  it 
probably  never  occurred  to  him  that  the  country  and  peo- 
ple existed  for  any  other  purpose  than  to  minister  to  his 
indulgence,  and  he  would  have  greeted  with  stupefaction  a 
suggestion  that  he  could  or  should  give  his  subjects  a  more 
efficient  government.  He  sometimes  gave  good-natured 
approval  when  a  foreigner  proposed  an  improvement;  but 
he  was  too  weak  and  indolent  to  care  about  better  things 
either  for  himself  or  for  his  people. 

It  is  difficult  to  tell  who  were  the  first  white  men  to  see 
the  shores  of  the  Hermit  Nation.  Probably  the  earliest 
arrival  was  a  Portuguese  Jesuit  priest,  Gregorio  de  Ces- 
pedes,  who  came  as  a  chaplain  of  the  Japanese  Roman 
Catholic  Christian,  Don  Augustin  Konishi  Yukinaga,  who 
commanded  the  second  expedition  against  Korea  by 
Hideyoshi. 

The  next  white  men  were  some  Dutch  sailors  who  be- 
longed to  a  ship  which  was  making  a  trading  voyage  in  the 
Far  East  in  1627.  Three  sailors,  one  of  whom  was  named 
Jan  Weltervree,  landed  on  the  Korean  coast  to  get  fresh 
water,  and  were  taken  prisoners.  They  were  kindly  treated 
but  compelled  to  remain  in  the  country.  The  two  others 
were  killed  in  the  Manchu  invasion  of  1635,  but  Weltervree 
lived  a  lonely  life  till  1653,  when  he  was  delighted  by  the 
unexpected  arrival  of  a  considerable  party  of  his  country- 


38  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

men.  They,  too,  had  come  involuntarily.  The  Dutch 
ship  Sparwehr  had  been  wrecked  off  Quelpart  Island.  Of 
the  sixty-four  men  on  board  all  were  drowned  except  thirty- 
six,  who  managed  to  reach  land.  One  of  these  was  a  Scotch- 
man named  John  Bosket,  and  another  was  the  famous  Hen- 
drik  Hamel,  the  supercargo  of  the  vessel.  He  has  left  a 
quaint  narrative  of  the  experiences  of  the  party.  A  local 
magistrate  received  them  with  some  kindness,  and  October 
29  they  were  brought  to  Weltervree  in  order  that  he  might 
serve  as  interpreter.  With  his  aid  an  escape  to  Japan  was 
planned,  but  the  barking  of  dogs  betrayed  them,  and  they 
were  soundly  bambooed  and  sent  to  Seoul  under  a  guard. 
All  along  the  way  the  people  manifested  the  greatest  curi- 
osity to  see  the  strange  white  men.  Arriving  at  Seoul, 
they  were  brought  before  King  Hyo-jong,  who  told  them 
that  they  must  remain  permanently  in  Korea. 

The  captives  had  checkered  experiences.  Sometimes 
they  were  treated  kindly,  and  sometimes  harshly;  but  they 
were  always  closely  watched.  After  a  time  they  were  sepa- 
rated, and  the  allowance  of  rice,  which  they  had  at  first  been 
given,  was  cut  off.  Their  condition  now  became  pitiable, 
and  hunger  and  disease  thinned  their  numbers.  Septem- 
ber 5,  1666,  after  thirteen  years  of  captivity,  the  few  sur- 
vivors succeeded  in  escaping  in  a  native  sailboat  to  Japan, 
where  they  found  a  ship  from  Batavia  that  was  about  to 
sail  on  its  return  voyage.  They  arrived  at  Batavia  No- 
vember 20,  1667,  and  July  20  of  the  following  year  they 
again  set  foot  on  the  soil  of  Holland.  Hamel's  account  of 
their  adventures  was  published  at  Rotterdam  in  1668,  and 
passed  through  several  editions  in  Dutch,  French,  German, 
Spanish,  and  English.  He  gives  a  good  account  of  the  vari- 
ous parts  of  Korea  that  he  saw  in  his  captivity,  although  his 
spelling  of  proper  names  makes  it  rather  difficult  to  follow 
his  narrative. 

Meantime,  other  sources  of  information  had  become 
available.  A  rude  map  of  the  peninsula,  sent  by  the  Jesuits 
in  Peking,  had  been  published  in  France.  In  1649  an 
Amsterdam  press  issued  a  book  entitled  China  Illustrate, 


THE  VANISHED  DAYS  OF  OLD  KOREA     39 

written  by  the  Jesuit  Father  Martini,  in  which  another 
map  of  Korea  figured.  In  1707  a  Chinese  envoy  obtained 
a  map  in  Seoul,  which  the  Jesuits  carefully  reproduced  on  a 
smaller  scale  and  sent  to  France  to  be  engraved.  Rest- 
less Cossacks,  who  had  pushed  their  way  across  Siberia  to 
the  Pacific,  sent  reports  of  Korea  back  to  Russia,  and  so 
full  were  these  accounts  that  Sir  John  Campbell  was  able 
to  compile  from  them  his  book,  Commercial  History  of 
Chorea  and  Japan,  which  was  published  in  1771.  As  time 
passed  a  few  other  scraps  of  information  were  added  to  the 
world's  tiny  stock  of  knowledge  of  this  far-away  land.  A 
wandering  trading  vessel  now  and  then  touched  at  a  Korean 
port,  and  at  rare  intervals  a  foreign  warship  anchored  in  a 
convenient  harbor.  Captain  W.  R.  Broughton  stopped  at 
Yung-hing  Bay,  October  4,  1797.  Basil's  Bay  takes  its 
name  from  Captain  Basil  Hall  who  entered  it  in  1816. 
Here  the  famous  missionary,  Charles  Gutzlaff,  landed  in 
1832,  showed  the  people  how  to  raise  potatoes,  and  when 
he  departed  left  with  them  seeds  and  Christian  books. 
June  25,  1845,  the  British  ship  Samarang,  commanded  by 
Captain  Edwin  Belcher,  arrived  off  Quelpart  and  spent 
about  a  month  in  making  a  survey  of  this  dangerous  coast. 

Koreans,  however,  continued  to  jog  along  their  imme- 
morial ways,  ignorantly  indifferent  to  the  Western  world. 
China  and  Japan  they  knew  from  the  painful  experience  of 
war  and  tribute,  but  the  occasional  white  men  who  sporadi- 
cally landed  on  their  shores  were  transitory  visitants  from 
a  realm  of  which  Koreans  knew  little  and  cared  less.  Korea 
was  still  the  Hermit  Nation  and  the  Land  of  the  Morning 
Calm,  and  of  several  other  kinds  of  calm.  China  was 
forced  into  treaty  relations  with  European  nations,  and 
Japan  was  opened  to  the  outside  world,  but  Korea  slum- 
bered on  as  it  had  slumbered  for  centuries. 

It  was  not  till  the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  century 
that  the  spell  was  broken.  Men  of  three  nations  pressed 
for  entrance  in  the  year  1866.  Russians  demanded  trading 
concessions.  A  French  war-vessel  arrived  to  inflict  punish- 
ment for  the  murder  of  some  French  missionaries  who  had 


40  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

entered  the  country  in  disguise,  but  the  commander  found 
the  task  more  difficult  than  he  had  anticipated,  and  left 
without  doing  any  serious  damage.  Americans  also  came, 
and  in  circumstances  which  their  countrymen  recall  with 
disagreeable  sensations.  The  first  contact,  indeed,  was 
pleasant.  The  American  schooner  Surprise  was  wrecked  off 
the  Korean  coast,  June  24.  Its  destitute  crew  was  treated 
with  the  utmost  kindness  by  the  Korean  officials,  who  pro- 
vided for  their  wants  and  facilitated  their  journey  to  the 
Chinese  border,  whence  they  proceeded  to  New-chwang, 
in  Manchuria,  where  there  was  an  American  consul.  In 
August  of  the  same  year  the  American  schooner  General 
Sherman  sailed  up  the  Tatong  River.  It  reached  a  point 
about  a  mile  from  the  city  of  Pyongyang,  where  it  went 
aground.  Multitudes  of  Koreans  flocked  to  the  shore  to 
see  the  strange  vessel,  and  some  went  aboard.  Trouble 
soon  broke  out,  and  in  the  mele*e  the  schooner  was  burned, 
most  of  its  officers  and  crew  were  killed,  the  rest  taken  to 
the  city  and  executed,  and  the  cannon  and  anchor-chains 
were  exposed  to  public  view  on  the  city  gates. 

The  following  year,  1867,  came  the  famous,  or  rather  in- 
famous, "International  Body-Snatching  Expedition,"  un- 
der command  of  a  German  named  Oppert,  guided  by  a 
French  priest,  and  accompanied  by  an  American  inter- 
preter. They  had  the  crazy  notion  that  the  tombs  of  the 
Korean  kings  were  rich  repositories  of  gold  and  other 
treasure,  and  that  these  tombs  could  not  only  be  easily 
pillaged,  but  the  bodies  of  the  defunct  kings  held  for 
ransom.  The  buccaneers  failed  to  achieve  their  nefarious 
purpose,  but  they  succeeded  in  desecrating  some  graves, 
fighting  a  number  of  Koreans,  and  causing  wholesale  exas- 
peration. The  American  Consul  in  Shanghai,  Mr.  George  F. 
Seward,  arrested  and  tried  the  American  for  participating 
in  the  expedition;  but  legal  evidence  to  justify  a  verdict  of 
guilty  was  lacking,  although  the  Consul  had  no  doubt  that 
it  would  have  been  richly  deserved. 

When,  therefore,  an  American  naval  squadron  went  to 
Korea,  in  1871,  commanded  by  Admiral  John  Rodgers,  to 
demand  satisfaction  for  the  murder  of  the  crew  of  the  Gen- 


THE  VANISHED  DAYS  OF  OLD  KOREA     41 

eral  Sherman,  Koreans  were  not  in  a  mood  to  regard  it  as 
friendly.  The  King  declined  to  recognize  the  squadron, 
sending  back  word  that  if  the  sailors  were  hungry  they 
would  be  given  food  on  condition  that  they  would  immedi- 
ately depart;  but  that  if  they  had  come  to  change  the  cus- 
toms of  the  people  they  would  find  it  difficult  to  overthrow 
the  prejudices  of  four  thousand  years;  that  a  people  calling 
themselves  French  had  once  undertaken  this,  and  the 
Americans  were  respectfully  referred  to  them  for  the  de- 
tails of  what  happened  then.  Thereupon  the  admiral  or- 
dered an  attack  upon  the  fort  at  the  mouth  of  the  river, 
which  was  quickly  demolished,  although  not  without  sharp 
fighting.  This  was  June  10,  and  two  weeks  later  the 
squadron  sailed  away. 

Admiral  Winfield  Scott  Schley,  who  participated  as  a 
young  officer  in  this  expedition,  gives  a  graphic  account  of 
it  in  his  Own  Story,  published  in  1912.  He  declared  that 
"the  General  Sherman  had  been  wantonly  destroyed  for  no 
other  reason  than  that  she  had  visited  the  Korean  waters," 
and  that  "the  action  taken  by  Korea  against  the  General 
Sherman  was  so  unprovoked  and  so  unjustified  that  no 
nation  could  maintain  its  influence,  or  even  its  self-respect, 
unless  it  demanded  an  apology  and  indemnity,  especially 
at  a  time  when  the  hostile  feeling  of  a  large  class  in  China 
was  being  outwardly  manifested  toward  all  foreigners." 
Whether  this  version  of  the  case  is  correct  or  not,  it  is  gratify- 
ing to  know  that  the  American  naval  officers  felt  so  con- 
fident that  their  course  was  justified,  and  that  "Admiral 
Rodgers  exhausted  every  peaceful  means  to  negotiate  with 
the  Koreans  in  order  to  ascertain  whether  they  could  jus- 
tify their  destruction  of  the  General  Sherman  and  the  mur- 
der of  her  crew."  At  any  rate,  the  punishment  was  swift 
and  dire.  After  killing  many  of  the  Koreans,  routing  the 
remainder,  disabling  their  cannon,  and  blowing  up  their 
magazines,  "we  returned  to  our  ships,"  continues  the  nar- 
rative, "the  duty  of  our  expedition  having  been  fulfilled  to 
the  letter  and  the  insult  to  the  flag  avenged." 

Koreans  give  a  different  account  of  the  circumstances 
which  brought  about  the  massacre  of  the  crew  of  the  Gen- 


42  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

eral  Sherman.  It  is  difficult  to  separate  the  truth  from  the 
error  in  the  confused  jumble  of  reports,  rumors,  charges, 
and  countercharges.  Not  an  American  lived  to  tell  the 
tale,  and  Koreans  are  not  famous  for  telling  the  unvarnished 
truth,  especially  when  they  are  defending  themselves  from 
a  charge  of  murder;  neither  are  Americans.  At  any  rate, 
candor  compels  record  of  the  fact  that  the  Koreans  assert 
that  the  provocation  was  committed  by  the  foreign  sailors. 
Doctor  S.  Wells  Williams,  then  secretary  of  the  American 
legation  in  Peking,  carefully  inquired  into  the  matter,  and 
came  to  the  conclusion  that  "the  evidence  goes  to  uphold 
the  presumption  that  they  (the  crew)  invoked  their  sad 
fate  by  some  rash  or  violent  act  toward  the  natives." 

It  should  be  borne  in  mind,  too,  that  the  Koreans  at  that 
time  were  apprehensive  of  an  attack  by  the  French;  that 
they  had  seen  very  few  white  men  and  could  not  easily 
distinguish  between  Frenchmen  and  Americans;  that  the 
schooner  was  heavily  armed;  and  that  the  natives,  remem- 
bering the  notorious  "Body-Snatching  Expedition"  a  few 
years  before,  quite  naturally  suspected  like  sinister  motives 
in  another  vessel  of  the  same  type.  The  Reverend  Doctor 
William  M.  Baird,  an  American  Presbyterian  missionary  in 
Pyengyang,  says  that  he  talked  with  many  people  who 
saw  the  General  Sherman  come  up  the  river  and  some  who 
were  aboard  the  steamer  at  a  point  some  distance  from 
Pyengyang,  and  that  one  of  them,  who  at  the  time  of  the 
interview  had  become  a  Christian  and  whom  Doctor  Baird 
regarded  as  trustworthy,  told  him  that  the  schooner  had 
violated  the  law  in  entering  the  river  without  permission, 
and  that  a  magistrate,  who  had  gone  on  board,  was  de- 
tained and  not  allowed  to  return  to  the  shore. 

Admiral  Rodgers  said  that  his  purpose  was  peaceful,  and 
that  he  only  desired  justice;  but  the  Koreans  did  not  under- 
stand why  a  peaceful  mission  should  come  in  ships  of  war. 
They  were  not  accustomed  to  seeing  kindly  disposed  vis- 
itors approaching  them  armed  to  the  teeth.  They  had 
learned  that  foreign  ships  had  usually  meant  fighting,  and 
they  acted  accordingly. 


THE  VANISHED  DAYS  OF  OLD  KOREA     43 

Wherever  the  truth  may  lie,  Americans  should  be  fair 
enough  to  see  that,  reprehensible  as  the  course  of  the 
Koreans  may  have  been  from  our  view-point,  the  occasions 
for  misunderstanding  undoubtedly  existed,  and  that  in 
the  whole  series  of  events  Americans  were  far  from  blame- 
less. As  for  the  Koreans,  they  were  more  thoroughly  con- 
vinced than  ever  that  foreigners  were  barbarians  and  that 
the  less  that  was  seen  of  them  the  better. 

But  the  time  had  come  when  the  isolation  of  the  past 
could  no  longer  be  maintained.  The  new  world  movement 
had  reached  the  Far  East.  Japan  and  China  had  already 
been  forced  out  of  their  immemorial  seclusion,  and  it  was 
impossible  for  the  intervening  Korean  peninsula  to  stand 
apart  from  a  force  which  had  overcome  the  conservatism 
of  stronger  nations.  A  few  of  the  more  intelligent  Koreans 
saw  this;  but  the  dull  and  stubborn  conservatism  of  cen- 
turies was  not  to  be  overcome  in  a  day.  The  party  of  re- 
action, led  by  the  able  and  fanatical  Tai-wen-kun,  fiercely 
opposed  the  men  of  progressive  spirit.  However,  other 
nations  pressed  for  treaty  relations,  and  the  year  1882  saw 
their  consummation.  The  first  to  be  signed  was  with  the 
United  States.  Several  American  ships  had  been  wrecked 
off  the  Korean  coast,  and  the  sailors  who  had  managed  to 
reach  the  shore  had  been  tied  hand  and  foot,  slung  on  poles 
like  pigs  for  the  market,  borne  to  some  interior  city,  and 
there  put  to  death.  The  government  at  Washington  had 
made  several  vain  attempts  to  secure  relations  which  would 
prevent  the  recurrence  of  such  outrages,  and  finally,  in 
1882,  Commodore  R.  W.  Schufeldt  of  the  American  navy 
succeeded  in  effecting  a  treaty,  which  was  drafted  by  the 
Honorable  Chester  Holcombe,  then  acting  American  Min- 
ister in  Peking.  Treaties  with  other  nations  soon  fol- 
lowed— with  Germany  in  1883,  Russia  and  Italy  in  1884, 
France  in  1886,  and  Austria-Hungary  in  1892;  the  Korean 
Government  signing  one  after  the  other  with  varying  de- 
grees of  reluctance.  And  so  Korea  ceased  to  be  the  "Her- 
mit Nation." 


CHAPTER  III 
THE  KOREAN  PEOPLE 

THE  census  of  1902  gave  the  population  of  the  country 
as  5,782,806,  a  preposterously  unreliable  figure.  The  old 
Korean  Government  required  each  magistrate  to  state  how 
many  people  were  under  his  jurisdiction,  and  it  assessed 
taxes  on  the  basis  of  his  report.  In  order  to  make  the  taxes 
as  low  as  possible,  the  magistrates  lied  egregiously,  having 
no  American  ambition  to  make  their  cities  appear  as  large 
as  possible.  The  latest  Japanese  census  places  the  popu- 
lation at  17,406,645,  of  whom  18,972  were  Chinese,  597 
Americans,  223  British,  107  French,  57  Germans,  and 
303,659  Japanese.  All  of  the  difference  of  a  dozen  millions 
between  the  Korean  and  Japanese  counts  should  not  be 
charged  to  the  mendacity  of  the  native  officials,  for  the 
population  has  really  increased  rapidly  during  recent  years. 
The  Japanese  census  of  1910  reported  12,934,282  people, 
so  that  reliable  data  indicate  mounting  numbers.  The 
influx  of  Japanese  is  about  offset  by  the  exodus  of  Koreans 
to  Manchuria,  so  that  the  native  birth-rate  is  apparently 
rising  and  the  death-rate  falling  under  the  better  physical 
conditions  of  Japanese  rule. 

Sharply  diverse  views  have  been  expressed  regarding  the 
character  of  the  Koreans.  No  other  people  in  Asia  have 
been  so  contemptuously  characterized.  Captain  Bostwick, 
of  the  United  States  warship  Polos,  which  lay  some  months 
in  the  harbor  of  Chemulpo  many  years  ago,  expressed  hi  a 
poetic  effusion  his  disgust  of  the 

"...  singular  country  far  over  the  seas, 
Which  is  known  to  the  world  as  Korea, 
Where  there's  nothing  to  charm  and  nothing  to  please, 
And  of  cleanliness  not  an  idea." 

Some  later  travellers  have  not  been  more  favorably  im- 
pressed. Mr.  Whigham,  in  his  Manchuria  and  Korea,  de- 

44 


THE  KOREAN  PEOPLE  45 

clares  that  "the  Korean  resembles  the  pale  ghost  of  what 
a  Chinaman  was  a  thousand  years  ago.  .  .  .  The  China- 
man has  so  many  good  points  that  it  is  possible  even  to 
defend  his  civilization  against  our  own.  The  Korean  has 
absolutely  nothing  to  recommend  him  save  his  good  nature." 
Lord  Curzon  expressed  an  equally  unfavorable  opinion  in  his 
volume  on  Problems  of  the  Far  East:  "The  spectacle  of  a 
country  boasting  a  separate,  if  not  an  independent  national 
existence  for  centuries,  and  yet  devoid  of  all  external  symp- 
toms of  strength;  inhabited  by  a  people  of  physical  vigor 
but  moral  inertness;  well  endowed  with  resources,  yet  crip- 
pled for  want  of  funds — such  a  spectacle  is  one  to  which  I 
know  no  counterpart  even  in  Asia,  the  continent  of  con- 
trasts." Archibald  Little,  in  The  Far  East,  says  that  "all 
ambition  or  desire  for  progress  seems  to  have  died  out 
from  among  them,"  and  that  "a  naturally  capable  race, 
holding  an  exaggerated  reverence  for  their  Chinese  teach- 
ers, has  lapsed  into  a  condition  of  self-satisfaction  and  con- 
sequently arrested  progress  without,  at  the  same  time,  hav- 
ing acquired  Chinese  devotion  to  work." 

George  Kennan  is  even  more  pessimistic,  declaring  in  an 
article  in  The  Outlook  that  "  they  are  not  only  unattractive 
and  unsympathetic  to  a  Westerner  who  feels  no  spiritual 
interest  in  them,  but  they  appear  more  and  more  to  be 
lazy,  dirty,  unscrupulous,  dishonest,  incredibly  ignorant, 
and  wholly  lacking  in  the  self-respect  that  comes  from  a 
consciousness  of  individual  power  and  worth.  They  are 
not  undeveloped  savages;  they  are  the  rotten  product  of 
a  decayed  Oriental  civilization."  Professor  George  T. 
Ladd,  after  his  visit  to  Korea  in  1907,  wrote:  "The  Koreans 
are  the  most  untrustworthy  and  lacking  in  manly  virtues 
of  any  people  I  have  ever  come  in  contact  with.  The  most 
that  their  devoted  admirers  can  say  of  them  is  that  they 
are  of  an  amiable  nature.  But  nothing  is  more  beastly 
and  insane  in  its  cruelty  than  a  Korean  mob.  .  .  .  The 
native  character  is  rather  more  despicable  than  that  of  any 
other  people  whom  I  have  come  to  know." 

One  is  reminded  of  Mr.  Russell's  story  in  Collections  and 


46  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

Recollections,  that  when  Selina,  Countess  of  Huntingdon, 
asked  the  Duchess  of  Buckingham  to  accompany  her  to  a 
sermon  by  Whitefield,  the  Duchess  replied  that  the  doctrines 
of  the  Methodist  preachers  were  most  repulsive  and  strongly 
tinged  with  impertinence  and  disrespect  toward  their  su- 
periors. "It  is  monstrous  to  be  told,"  she  wrote,  "that  you 
have  a  heart  as  simple  as  the  common  wretches  that  crawl 
on  the  earth;  and  I  cannot  but  wonder  that  your  Ladyship 
should  relish  any  sentiments  so  much  at  variance  with 
high  rank  and  good  breeding." 

It  must  be  admitted  that  some  of  the  Korean  traits 
which  impress  the  superficial  observer  are  far  from  agree- 
able. The  people  appear,  at  first  glance,  to  be  the  least 
attractive  of  the  peoples  of  Asia.  They  lack  the  energy 
and  ambition  of  the  Japanese,  the  thrift,  industry,  and 
strength  of  the  Chinese.  The  visitor  usually  comes  from 
Japan,  and  the  contrast  is  painful.  The  villages  are  squalid 
collections  of  mushroom  hovels.  The  streets  are  crooked 
alleys,  and  their  lounging  denizens  are  apparently  most 
unpromising  material.  Indolence  is  a  national  character- 
istic. The  Korean  is  content  to  take  life  as  easily  as  pos- 
sible. He  is  never  so  happy  as  when  he  is  supported  by 
some  wealthier  relation  or  has  some  government  office 
which  relieves  him  from  the  necessity  of  labor.  Public 
sentiment  does  not  regard  dependence  as  in  any  way  un- 
manly, and  every  Korean  of  substance  or  position  is  sur- 
rounded by  a  swarm  of  parasites. 

Filthy  is  not  a  pleasant  word,  but  one  must  use  it  in  re- 
ferring to  the  personal  habits  of  the  Koreans.  The  higher 
classes  and  the  mission  converts  are  notably  clean,  but  the 
common  people  are  unspeakably  dirty.  They  know  noth- 
ing of  sanitation  and  care  less.  When  free  to  do  as  they 
please,  they  throw  garbage  and  offal  on  the  ground,  and 
leave  it  to  breed  every  kind  of  zymotic  abomination.  They 
cast  all  slops  into  an  open  trench  beside  their  huts.  The 
trench  ends  a  few  yards  from  the  house,  and  the  filth  seeps 
into  the  soil,  often  near  the  wells  from  which  the  drinking- 
water  is  drawn.  Open  ditches  along  the  sides  of  the  streets 


THE  KOREAN  PEOPLE  47 

become  choked  with  refuse  and  form  pools  of  filth,  in  which 
mangy,  quarrelling  dogs  prowl  for  refuse,  and  the  scavenger 
hog  wallows  in  a  way  that  enables  one  to  understand  why 
the  Mosaic  law  forbade  the  eating  of  pork.  In  the  hot, 
wet  months  of  July  and  August,  a  Korean  city  becomes  a 
steaming  cesspool  of  malodorous  slime. 

The  Korean  does  not  have  a  nice  taste  regarding  his 
food,  and  the  foreigner  will  do  well  to  avoid  meat  unless  he 
has  personally  seen  the  animal  killed.  Koreans,  like  Chi- 
nese, seldom  feel  that  they  can  afford  to  kill  a  useful  cow 
or  bullock,  and  the  meat  that  is  exposed  for  sale  is  ordi- 
narily that  of  some  animal  which  has  died  of  disease  or  old 
age.  One  is  reminded  of  the  old  woman  who  was  frying 
pork  when  a  neighbor  dropped  in  for  a  chat.  "Grand 
bacon,  that,"  said  the  friend,  sniffing  affably.  "Grand 
bacon?  Well,  I  guess  it  is  grand  bacon,"  said  the  old  lady, 
turning  the  slices  in  the  pan.  "An'  it's  none  o'  yer  mur- 
dered stuff,  nuther;  that  pig  died  a  natural  death."  After 
a  residence  of  fifteen  years  in  Korea  Mrs.  H.  G.  Underwood 
wrote:  "Every  imaginable  practice  which  comes  under  the 
definition  of  unhygienic  or  unsanitary  is  common.  Even 
young  children  in  arms  eat  raw  and  green  cucumbers,  un- 
peeled,  acrid  berries,  and  heavy,  soggy,  hot  bread.  They 
bolt  quantities  of  hot  or  cold  rice,  with  a  tough,  indigestible 
cabbage  washed  in  ditch-water,  prepared  with  turnips  and 
flavored  with  salt  and  red  pepper.  Green  fruit  of  every 
kind  is  eaten  with  perfect  recklessness  of  all  the  laws  of 
nature,  and  with  an  impunity  which  makes  a  Westerner 
stand  aghast.  But  even  these,  so  to  speak,  galvanized-iron 
interiors  are  not  always  proof.  Every  five  or  six  years  a 
bacillus  develops  itself,  so  hardened,  so  well-armed,  so 
deeply  toxic,  that  even  Koreans  must  succumb,  and  then 
there  is  an  epidemic  of  cholera."1  The  Japanese  have 
energetically  grappled  with  the  problem  of  sanitation  and 
have  made  marked  improvements,  particularly  in  the  capi- 
tal; but  it  will  be  a  long  time  before  the  peasant  Korean 
will  be  decently  clean  except  under  compulsion. 

1  Fifteen  Years  Among  the  Top-Knots,  pp.  133-134. 


48  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

But  there  is  another  side  to  this  picture.  While  it  must 
be  conceded  that  the  Koreans  lack  the  energy  and  ambi- 
tion of  the  Japanese,  and  the  industry  and  persistence  of 
the  Chinese,  one  should  remember  that  for  centuries  their 
position  has  been  unfavorable  to  the  development  of 
strength  of  character.  A  comparatively  small  nation, 
hemmed  in  between  warlike  Japan  on  one  side  and  mighty 
China  on  the  other,  the  Land  of  the  Morning  Calm  was 
doomed  from  the  outset  to  be  a  tributary  state,  and  its 
people  long  ago  helplessly  acquiesced  in  the  inevitable. 
They  had  become  so  accustomed  to  being  pulled  and 
hauled  by  contending  masters  and  to  being  impoverished 
and  maltreated  by  their  own  magistrates  that  they  came 
to  accept  subjugation  and  poverty  as  the  natural  concomi- 
tants of  life.  With  no  prospect  of  independence  as  a  nation, 
their  ruling  classes  gave  themselves  up  to  self-indulgence 
and  dissipation.  It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that  the 
superior  power  of  neighboring  nations  taught  the  Koreans 
dependence;  that  the  exactions  of  tax-gatherers  fostered 
deceit;  that  the  certainty  that  the  results  of  toil  could  not 
be  enjoyed  begat  indolence;  and  that  the  denial  of  rights 
that  any  one  was  bound  to  recognize  generated  despair. 

The  poverty  of  the  people  was  bitter,  and  the  introduc- 
tion of  foreign  goods  made  it  worse  for  a  time.  Koreans 
formerly  grew  their  own  cotton  and  wove  on  hand-looms 
the  cloth  for  the  ubiquitous  white  flowing  garment  of  the 
common  people,  while  the  silk  worn  by  the  better  classes 
was  also  produced  at  home.  Then  English  cotton  and 
Japanese  silk  were  poured  into  the  country,  and  the  indolent 
people  found  it  easier  to  buy  them  than  to  make  their  own. 
In  like  manner  they  bought  foreign  lamps,  pipes,  tobacco, 
and  many  of  the  utensils  which  they  once  made  for  them- 
selves. They  had  little  to  export  to  balance  these  imports. 
Some  rice  and  beans  went  to  Japan,  but  not  enough  to  be 
an  important  factor  in  the  economic  situation.  Concessions 
for  the  mines  and  forests  were  granted  by  the  old  Emperor 
to  foreign  companies,  and  the  price  of  the  concession  was 
squandered  by  corrupt  officials,  so  that  the  people  derived 


THE  KOREAN  PEOPLE  49 

no  benefit.  Thus  Korea  was  drained  of  her  money.  It 
was  all  outgo  and  no  income. 

Debt  not  infrequently  ended  in  slavery,  as  the  debtor 
could  find  no  way  to  meet  his  obligation  except  to  sell  him- 
self to  his  creditor.  Apart  from  such  cases,  slavery  could 
hardly  be  said  to  exist.  It  is  true  that  children  were  occa- 
sionally sold  by  their  parents  in  time  of  famine,  that  the 
family  of  a  decapitated  criminal  might  become  the  slaves 
of  the  judge,  and  that  a  few  were  born  in  slavery.  But  the 
number  of  slaves  was  small.  Serfdom,  however,  existed  for 
centuries.  It  was  at  its  height  during  the  old  feudal  days; 
and  until  recently  serfs  were  still  to  be  found  on  the  estates 
of  the  great  nobles.  The  condition  of  multitudes  of  the 
common  people,  however,  was  so  abject  that  their  lot  could 
hardly  be  worse  if  they  had  been  serfs. 

The  general  poverty  appears  in  the  architecture.  It  fol- 
lows Chinese  lines  in  the  more  pretentious  buildings,  like 
the  royal  palaces  and  the  yamens  of  the  governors  and  magis- 
trates. But,  however  wonderful  they  may  be  in  the  eyes 
of  a  Korean,  to  a  foreigner  they  are  humble  enough.  A 
country  merchant  in  America  lives  in  a  better  house  than 
the  Emperor  of  Korea  occupied,  and  thousands  of  stables 
in  the  United  States  are  more  attractive  than  the  official 
residence  of  a  provincial  governor.  The  buildings  are  not 
only  plain,  but  usually  dilapidated.  It  seldom  occurs  to  a 
Korean  to  make  repairs,  and  even  in  palaces  and  temples 
one  sees  crumbling  walls  and  dirty  courtyards. 

The  houses  are  of  one  story.  The  typical  house  of  the 
common  people  is  a  rude  but  strong  framework  of  crooked 
poles,  woven  together  with  millet-stalks  or  brush,  fastened 
with  straw  ropes,  and  plastered  with  mud.  The  roofs  in 
cities  are  covered  with  ponderous  tiles,  but  in  the  villages 
they  are  thatched  with  rice  straw.  The  interiors  are  gloomy 
and  unwholesome,  the  windows,  if  there  are  any,  being  small 
and  covered  with  a  tough  oiled  paper,  which  admits  a  dim 
light  but  no  air.  The  doors  are  so  low  that  the  American 
bumps  his  head  at  every  entrance  unless  he  keeps  his  wits 
about  him.  The  floor  is  usually  of  flat  stones  covered  with 


50  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

a  rough  cement,  on  which  lie  a  few  mats  which  are  often 
alive  with  vermin.  The  fire  is  built  outside  of  the  house 
and  the  flues  run  under  the  earthen  floor.  In  this  way  the 
fire  for  cooking  also  serves  to  heat  the  room.  As  it  is 
usually  kept  going  in  the  summer  to  cook  the  rice  and  beans 
for  the  family  food,  the  interior  becomes  like  an  oven. 
An  inn  is  simply  a  larger  house,  and  as  there  are  no  beds 
in  Korea,  the  unhappy  traveller  who  has  not  brought  a 
cot  with  him  must  sleep,  as  the  natives  do,  upon  the  floor. 
Half-boiled  by  the  heat,  assailed  by  the  swarming  vermin, 
and  disturbed  by  barking  dogs  and  squealing  ponies  in  the 
adjoining  courtyard,  he  is  apt  to  feel  in  troubled  dreams  that 
he  is  lying  on  a  hot  stove  amid  jeering,  biting  demons. 
However,  this  arrangement  serves  the  important  purpose 
of  keeping  Korean  houses  free  from  dampness.  The  poorer 
ones  have  only  two  rooms,  but  the  houses  of  the  middle 
classes  contain  from  three  to  six,  while  all  gentlemen  who 
are  able  to  afford  it  have  in  addition  a  sarang,  a  kind  of 
reception-room,  which  is  used  by  the  men,  and  where  guests 
are  entertained.  The  part  of  the  house  which  is  occupied 
by  the  women  is  called  the  anpang,  and  no  men,  except 
members  of  the  family,  are  ever  admitted.  There  are,  of 
course,  some  houses  that  are  roomier,  but  as  a  rule  the 
well-to-do  Korean  does  not  build  a  higher  house,  but  sim- 
ply adds  other  rooms  and  courtyards,  and  perhaps  puts  on 
a  tile  roof.  Rich  or  poor,  he  shuts  his  house  from  public 
view,  by  a  wall  if  he  can  afford  one,  otherwise  by  a  screen 
of  bamboo  or  millet  stalks. 

Hunger  does  not  go  hand  in  hand  with  poverty  as  it 
does  in  China  and  India.  The  food  is  coarse,  but  such  as 
it  is  there  is  enough,  save  in  exceptional  times  and  places. 
The  Korean  coolie  is  a  voracious  eater,  consuming  great 
quantities  of  rice  and  beans,  and  more  meat  than  either  the 
Chinese  or  the  Japanese.  Like  the  latter,  he  is  fond  of 
raw  fish,  intestines  and  all,  and  he  does  not  disdain  dogs, 
which  are  freely  eaten  by  the  common  people.  Every 
traveller  bears  witness  to  the  disposition  of  the  Koreans  to 
gorge  themselves.  I  marvelled  at  the  enormous  dishes  of 


THE  KOREAN  PEOPLE  51 

rice  and  beans  and  vegetables  that  my  chair-carriers  ate 
at  our  noon-day  stops.  When  fruit,  raclishes,  or  cucumbers 
were  to  be  had,  one  Korean  would  devour  as  many  as  sev- 
eral foreigners.  Even  babies,  at  an  age  when  an  American 
mother  would  allow  her  child  to  have  nothing  but  milk, 
are  crammed  with  rice,  and  after  a  child  will  not  eat  any 
more,  the  mother  stuffs  additional  rice  into  its  mouth  until 
it  is  impossible  to  cram  in  any  more. 

The  major  vices,  while  common,  are  not  so  conspicuous 
as  in  many  other  countries.  Gambling  exists,  but  is  not 
a  distinctive  vice  as  in  Siam  and  China.  There  is  a  good 
deal  of  immorality,  particularly  among  the  yangbans,  who 
usually  keep  as  many  concubines  and  dancing-girls  as  they 
can  afford.  But  before  the  Japanese  occupation,  outward 
signs  of  impurity  were  not  nearly  so  much  in  evidence  as 
in  other  Asiatic  countries.  Saloons  are  not  numerous,  save 
in  the  capital  and  the  treaty  ports,  where  they  are  largely 
patronized  by  foreigners.  I  saw  very  few  intoxicated 
Koreans  anywhere.  But  it  would  be  misleading  to  infer 
temperance  from  the  comparative  absence  of  drunken  men 
in  public  places,  for  the  Korean  drinks  in  his  own  home, 
especially  at  night,  where,  if  he  gets  drunk,  other  people 
are  not  apt  to  see  him.  He  makes  various  kinds  of  liquors, 
both  fermented  and  distilled,  from  his  native  grains,  and 
he  often  drinks  to  excess.  Rice-whiskey  is  consumed  in 
large  quantities  and  is  an  inseparable  concomitant  of  feasts 
and  social  gatherings  of  all  kinds.  It  is  not  pleasant  to 
know  that  contact  with  the  outside  world  is  aggravating 
the  vice  of  intemperance  in  Korea.  Koreans  are  learning 
to  like  foreign  liquors  better  than  their  own  raw  spirits. 
Increasing  quantities  of  gin  and  whiskey  are  being  im- 
ported from  Europe,  and  Japanese  sake  and  beer  are  pour- 
ing in  floods  into  the  country. 

There  is  a  good  deal  more  to  the  Koreans  than  the  cur- 
sory visitor  realizes.  Physically,  the  average  Korean  is  a 
robust  man.  He  is  not  as  tall  as  the  European  or  the 
Chinese  of  the  northern  provinces,  but  he  is  larger  than  the 
Japanese.  I  was  impressed  by  the  strength  and  endurance 


52  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

of  the  Korean  porters.  They  were  equipped  with  a  wooden 
framework  called  a  "jickie."  It  roughly  resembles  a  chair 
upside  down,  and  is  held  on  the  back  by  straps  or  ropes 
which  pass  over  the  shoulders  and  under  the  arms.  A 
porter  stooped  while  over  two  hundred  pounds  of  luggage 
was  piled  into  his  jickie,  when  he  rose  with  comparatively 
little  effort  and  jogged  along  from  the  station  in  Seoul  to 
the  house,  more  than  a  mile  away,  at  which  we  were  to  be 
entertained.  I  walked  briskly  myself  and  had  nothing  to 
carry,  but  the  trunks  were  at  the  house  within  five  minutes 
after  our  arrival,  the  charge  being  fifteen  sen  each  (about 
seven  and  a  half  cents).  These  men  live  on  a  diet  of  rice 
and  beans,  with  a  few  other  vegetables  and  an  occasional 
fish.  But  the  muscles  of  their  legs  and  arms  are  mighty 
bulging  knots  as  hard  as  whip-cords. 

A  significant  fact  is  that  with  the  adoption  of  foreign 
dress  it  is  very  difficult  to  tell  Koreans  and  Japanese  apart, 
except  by  the  language.  The  former  dissimilarity  in  appear- 
ance now  proves  to  have  been  in  the  topknot,  the  horse- 
hair hat,  and  the  flowing  white  garment.  Many  Koreans  in 
the  rural  districts  still  adhere  to  their  traditional  garb,  but 
increasing  numbers  in  the  cities  are  cutting  their  hair  Japa- 
nese fashion  and  wearing  the  same  style  of  clothing  as  their 
conquerors.  To  test  the  matter,  I  repeatedly  asked  old  resi- 
dents in  Seoul  to  tell  me  whether  men  whom  we  met  on 
the  streets  were  Koreans  or  Japanese,  and  they  could  sel- 
dom do  so  without  inquiring. 

The  Korean's  personal  courage  is  good,  as  he  repeatedly 
showed  in  his  former  wars  with  the  Japanese,  though  his 
lack  of  organization  and  competent  leadership  and  his 
ignorance  of  the  weapons  and  methods  of  modern  warfare 
make  him  helpless  before  the  Japanese  to-day. 

Nor  are  Koreans  lacking  mentally.  Their  political  help- 
lessness and  their  lack  of  initiative  and  ambition  have 
given  the  world  a  wrong  impression  as  to  their  real  ability. 
They  learn  readily  under  favorable  conditions  and  develop 
rapidly.  Every  delegate  conceded  that  the  best  speech  at 
the  International  Student  Conference  of  1907  in  Tokyo 


THE  KOREAN  PEOPLE  53 

was  made  by  a  Korean.  He  delivered  it  with  splendid 
power  in  excellent  English,  and  then,  to  the  admiration  of 
his  audience,  he  delivered  it  again  in  Japanese.  Korean 
children  are  remarkably  bright  scholars,  as  all  missionary 
teachers  testify.  My  long  tour  of  Asia  enabled  me  to 
compare  the  average  village  Korean  with  the  average  vil- 
lage types  of  the  Chinese,  Japanese,  Filipinos,  Siamese, 
East  Indians,  and  Syrians,  and  while  the  Koreans  were  more 
dirty  and  wretched  than  the  other  peoples,  they  impressed 
me  as  quite  as  capable  of  development  as  the  typical  Asiatic 
elsewhere,  if  conditions  were  equally  favorable.  Archibald 
Little,  who  saw  many  of  the  countries  of  Asia,  not  only 
wrote  of  the  superior  physique  of  the  Koreans,  but  he  de- 
clared that  "in  intelligence,  where  the  opportunity  of  its 
development  is  afforded,  they  are  not  inferior  to  other  races 
of  Mongol  type."1 

Their  ancient  history  is  one  of  honorable  achievement. 
Slothful  and  unambitious  as  they  now  appear  to  be,  they 
formerly  showed  considerable  inventive  genius  and  the 
ability  to  produce  many  articles  of  utility  and  ornament. 
I  have  referred  elsewhere  to  the  testimony  of  Koradadbeh, 
the  Arab  geographer  of  the  ninth  century,  that  in  his  time 
the  Koreans  made  nails,  rode  on  saddles,  wore  satin,  and 
manufactured  porcelain.  Japanese  records  show  that  the 
Japanese  themselves  first  learned  from  Koreans  the  culti- 
vation of  the  silkworm,  the  weaving  of  cloth,  the  principles 
of  architecture,  the  printing  of  books,  the  painting  of  pic- 
tures, the  beautifying  of  gardens,  the  making  of  leather 
harness,  and  the  shaping  of  more  effective  weapons.  Ko- 
reans learned  some  of  these  arts  from  the  Chinese;  but 
even  so  they  showed  their  readiness  to  learn,  while  they 
themselves  were  the  first  makers  of  a  number  of  important 
articles.  Whereas  the  Chinese  invented  the  art  of  printing 
from  movable  wooden  blocks,  the  Koreans  invented  metal 
type  in  1403.  They  used  a  phonetic  alphabet  in  the  early 
part  of  the  fifteenth  century.  They  saw  the  significance 
of  the  mariner's  compass  in  1525.  They  devised,  in  1550, 

1  The  Far  East,  p.  247. 


54  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

an  astronomical  instrument  which  they  very  properly  called 
"a  heavenly  measurer."  Money  was  used  as  a  medium  of 
exchange  in  Korea  long  before  it  was  employed  in  northern 
Europe.  They  used  cannon  and  explosive  shells  in  attack- 
ing the  invading  Japanese  in  1592.  The  first  iron-clad 
warship  in  the  world  was  invented  by  a  Korean,  Admiral 
Yi  Sun-siu,  in  the  sixteenth  century.  He  called  it  The 
Tortoise  Boat,  and  he  commanded  it  with  such  effectiveness 
against  the  Japanese  that  it  was  largely  instrumental  in 
defeating  the  fleet  of  Hideyoshi.  Korean  paper  has  long 
been  prized  in  the  Far  East.  It  is  made  from  various  ma- 
terials— rags,  hemp,  cotton,  rice-stalks,  and  the  inner  bark 
of  the  mulberry-tree.  When  soaked  in  oil  of  sesame,  it 
becomes  strong,  tough,  and  water-proof.  It  is  made  of  any 
desired  thickness  and  can  be  washed  without  injury.  It 
is  used  for  a  variety  of  purposes — laid  upon  the  floor,  hung 
upon  walls  and  ceilings,  and  pasted  over  the  latticed  win- 
dows in  place  of  glass.  Dozens  of  articles  are  made  of  it — 
kites,  lanterns,  fans,  umbrellas,  hats,  shoes,  clothes-chests, 
tobacco-pouches,  toys,  rain-coats,  water-proof  covering  for 
provisions,  etc. 

The  Koreans  of  to-day  have  not  improved  upon  the  in- 
ventions of  their  ancestors,  and  appear  to  have  deteriorated 
rather  than  advanced;  but  this  deterioration  has  been 
largely  due  to  conditions  which  can  be  remedied,  and  as 
a  matter  of  fact  are  now  being  remedied.  A  people  that 
showed  such  intelligence  once  can  probably,  under  more 
favorable  conditions,  show  equal  alertness  again. 

While  the  Japanese  proved  themselves  to  be  the  stronger 
in  war,  they  were  deeply  influenced  by  the  Koreans  in  re- 
ligion and  the  arts  of  peace.  Korea  gave  Buddhism  to 
Japan  in  552  A.  D.  Some  years  ago  a  Japanese  editor 
called  the  attention  of  his  readers  to  two  cases  of  beautiful 
early  Korean  pottery  which  had  just  been  placed  on  ex- 
hibition in  the  Japanese  department  of  the  Museum  of 
Fine  Arts  in  Boston,  and  whose  equal,  he  declared,  had 
probably  never  been  seen  in  America  before.  A  few  pieces 
of  this  kind  had  been  shown  before  in  the  Morse,  Macom- 


THE  KOREAN  PEOPLE  55 

her,  and  Ross  collections  of  the  museum,  but  nothing  so 
complete  or  so  representative  as  these  choice  examples  had 
been  on  view.  This  pottery  is  highly  valued  by  Japanese 
collectors,  who  eagerly  buy  the  few  specimens  that  can  now 
be  found  by  diligent  searching.1  The  Koreans  of  to-day  are 
adepts  in  making  pottery  which,  though  far  less  beautiful 
than  that  now  made  in  Japan  and  China,  is  well  adapted 
to  household  uses.  Jars  of  immense  size  are  made  for  stor- 
ing water  and  grain,  and  smaller  ones  are  used  for  scores  of 
practical  purposes,  and  for  ornamental  objects. 

Many  people  praise  the  Japanese  for  their  exquisite 
Satsuma  ware  without  knowing  that  the  Koreans  long  ago 
taught  the  Japanese  the  art  of  its  manufacture.  After  a 
seventh-century  war  between  China  and  Japan,  fought  as 
usual  hi  Korea  and  in  which  the  Chinese  were  victorious, 
2,400  Koreans  preferred  to  follow  the  defeated  Japanese  to 
Japan  rather  than  remain  in  Korea  as  subjects  of  China. 
They  settled  permanently  in  Japan,  established  potteries 
and  taught  pottery-making  to  the  Japanese.  This  was  the 
beginning  of  that  industry  in  Japan  for  which  the  Japanese 
are  now  so  famous.  Other  colonies  of  Korean  emigrants 
followed  from  time  to  time  until  tens  of  thousands  had 
come,  bringing  with  them  a  civilization  considerably  higher 
than  Japan  then  had,  intermarrying  with  the  islanders  and 
introducing  important  elements  into  Japanese  life. 

In  spite  of  the  apathetic  conservatism  of  Korea,  the 
people  have  welcomed  foreign  foods  with  avidity.  It  is 
not  surprising  that  tobacco,  which  was  introduced  by  the 
Japanese  in  1614  or  1615,  soon  became  a  universal  habit, 
not  only  all  the  men  but  most  of  the  women  and  children 
using  the  weed.  But  the  people  were  not  slow  to  recognize 
the  value  of  more  useful  things.  Cotton  cloth  was  appre- 
ciated centuries  ago.  The  rich  had  worn  silks  and  furs, 
and  the  poorer  classes  a  coarse  cloth  rudely  woven  from 
hemp,  sea-grass,  or  plaited  straw.  For  a  long  time  the 
Koreans  were  unable  to  secure  the  seeds  of  the  cotton-plant. 
There  is  a  tradition  that  the  Chinese  had  jealously  guarded 

1  The  Oriental  Review,  Dec.,  1911. 


56  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

them  in  order  that  they  might  control  the  trade,  but  that 
a  member  of  one  of  the  Korean  tribute  embassies  had  man- 
aged to  smuggle  a  few  seeds  out  of  the  country  hidden  in 
the  quill  of  a  feather  in  his  hat.  Cultivation  of  cotton  did 
not  become  common  until  the  Japanese  had  made  the  use 
of  the  cloth  familiar  at  the  time  of  their  invasions  in  the 
latter  part  of  the  sixteenth  century.  Then  the  growing  of 
cotton  and  the  manufacture  of  cloth  rapidly  increased. 
Kerosene-oil  was  also  instantly  appreciated,  and  large  quan- 
tities are  now  imported.  This  illuminant  has  made  a  great 
change  in  Korean  life,  since  it  has  made  possible  ways  of 
spending  the  evening  that  were  out  of  the  question  when 
the  only  illuminant  was  smoky  fish-oil.  With  kerosene-oil 
has  come  the  Japanese  match,  which  can  now  be  found  in 
the  remotest  hamlets. 

The  Korean  has  shown  that  when  he  is  fairly  paid  and 
well  treated  he  can  work  faithfully  and  intelligently.  This 
is  the  testimony  of  men  who  have  had  fair  opportunity  to 
judge.  A  missionary  wrote  to  several  American  gentlemen 
who  were  superintending  large  enterprises  in  the  country, 
and  asked  them  to  state  their  experience  with  the  Koreans 
in  their  employ.  The  replies,  which  are  in  my  possession, 
are  unanimously  and  emphatically  in  accord  with  the 
opinion  of  Mr.  Thomas  W.  Van  Ess,  auditor  of  the  0.  C. 
Mining  Company,  who  wrote:  "I  have  had  Koreans  work- 
ing under  me  for  thirteen  years.  I  have  always  found  them 
diligent,  good  workers  and  very  quick  to  learn,  and  in 
my  opinion,  taking  them  as  a  whole,  much  easier  to  teach 
than  the  other  Oriental  races  with  which  I  have  also  had 
many  years'  experience.  The  company  employs  on  the 
concession  about  5,000  Koreans,  and  the  heads  of  the 
different  departments  can  all  produce  dozens  of  natives 
who  are  now  experts  at  their  various  duties,  which  include 
work  as  miners,  timbermen,  hoist  and  stationary  engineers, 
machinists,  blacksmiths,  carpenters,  electricians,  assayers, 
millmen,  hospital  assistants,  etc.  All  that  is  necessary  to 
bring  out  the  splendid  capabilities  of  the  Korean  is  a  prac- 
tical education." 


THE  KOREAN  PEOPLE  57 

One  of  the  mining  superintendents  wrote  that  hi  an  acci- 
dent which  filled  a  shaft  with  gas,  the  foreman,  a  Norwegian, 
became  unconscious  on  the  third  level,  and  that,  after  many 
of  the  Americans  were  overcome  in  the  effort  to  save  him, 
the  Korean  miners  begged  the  others  not  to  go  hi  but  to 
leave  the  rescue  to  them  and  they  would  get  him  out;  and 
get  him  out  they  did,  but  too  late  to  save  his  life.  "These 
Korean  miners  risked  their  lives  to  save  Noren,  who  lost 
his  life  trying  to  save  their  people.  It  was  a  splendid  ex- 
hibition of  manhood  by  three  nationalities — American, 
Norwegian,  and  Korean — and  the  Korean  held  his  own 
with  the  others." 

It  is  significant  that  many  of  the  Koreans  who  have 
emigrated  to  Manchuria  have  quickly  become  industrious 
and  capable  men.  This  emigration  began  many  years  ago, 
but  for  a  long  period  it  was  confined  to  comparatively  few 
people  near  the  border,  some  of  whom  had  special  reasons 
for  getting  out  of  Korea.  More  substantial  emigration 
began  during  the  famine  of  1863,  which  led  larger  numbers 
of  hungry  Koreans  to  seek  the  more  fertile  lands  of  Man- 
churia. The  rule  of  the  Russians,  prior  to  their  expulsion 
from  Manchuria,  was  far  from  ideal,  but  there  was  a  better 
enforcement  of  law  than  in  Korea,  and  a  greater  security 
of  life  and  property.  Under  these  improved  conditions 
these  famine  refugees  became  comparatively  thrifty  and 
prosperous.  Since  the  Japanese  occupation  this  emigra- 
tion has  become  considerable,  until  there  are  now  said  to 
be  more  than  300,000  Koreans  in  Manchuria.  Many  of 
them  have  become  well-to-do  farmers  and  small  tradesmen 
and  have  shown  energy  and  self-reliance  in  adapting  them- 
selves to  the  new  conditions.  Mr.  J.  Bryner,  the  Dutch 
Consul  at  Vladivostok,  declared  some  years  ago  that 
Vladivostok  "owed  much  to  the  industry  of  the  Chinese 
and  Koreans,"  and  that  "many  of  them  are  now  quite 
wealthy  and  have  had  a  university  education,  while  the 
ladies  may  be  observed  in  ballrooms  or  in  any  public  assem- 
blage exquisitely  attired  in  the  latest  Paris  fashions,  and 
wearing  them  as  to  the  manner  born."1  I  suspect  that  the 

Quoted  in  the  Seoul  Press,  February  11,  1912. 


58  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

Paris  gowns  were  on  the  Chinese  women,  but  the  fact  that 
Mr.  Bryner  included  the  Korean  in  his  tribute  to  the  in- 
dustry and  prosperity  of  the  city's  Asiatic  population  in- 
dicates that  he  deemed  them  also  worthy  of  respect. 

Courtesy  of  manner  and  kindliness  of  disposition  are  at- 
tractive qualities  which  many  Koreans  possess  to  a  high 
degree.  It  is  true  that  punishments  were  brutal  and  that 
indifference  to  suffering  was  callous;  but  this  is  true  of 
Asiatics  generally.  Indeed  a  sensitive  regard  for  the  pains 
of  others  is  a  recent  development  in  the  white  man.  Stocks, 
whipping-posts,  foul  dungeons,  debtors'  prisons,  and  tor- 
turing to  extort  confession  survived  in  England  and  America 
till  well  into  the  last  century,  and  the  notorious  "third 
degree,"  to  which  suspected  men  are  still  subjected  by  the 
police  of  New  York,  Chicago,  and  other  cities,  causes  a 
mental  torture  which  is  almost  as  bad  as  the  rack  and 
thumb-screw  of  the  Middle  Ages.  Koreans  are  far  more 
considerate  and  helpful  to  one  another  than  Chinese.  The 
unfortunate  man  in  China  is  often  left  to  bear  his  adversity 
alone.  "  Men  are  cheap,  a  few  more  or  less  are  of  no  con- 
sequence," a  Chinese  indifferently  replied  to  an  indignant 
protest  against  leaving  the  occupants  of  a  capsized  boat  to 
drown.  But  the  Korean  is  sympathetic,  promptly  goes 
to  the  rescue  of  an  imperilled  man,  helps  a  neighbor  whose 
home  has  been  burned,  and,  however  poor  he  may  be  him- 
self, freely  offers  hospitality  even  to  passing  strangers. 

There  is  none  of  the  prejudice  against  white  men  which 
was  long  so  marked  in  China  and  Japan.  It  is  true  that 
only  a  generation  ago  (1866)  there  was  a  furious  anti- 
foreign  outbreak  in  which  9  French  priests  and  about 
20,000  Roman  Catholic  Christians  are  said  to  have  been 
killed;  but  overt  dislike  of  foreigners  is  now  confined  to  a 
few  officials  and  old  Confucian  scholars.  There  was  a 
temporary  commotion  when  it  was  discovered  that  on 
November  20,  1900,  a  secret  edict  had  been  issued  ordering 
an  uprising  against  foreigners  on  the  6th  of  December. 
Even  in  the  most  peaceable  of  civilized  lands  there  are  law- 
less characters  who  are  always  ready  for  violence.  Ameri- 


THE  KOREAN  PEOPLE  59 

cans  who  recall  the  readiness  with  which  a  mob  forms  in 
their  own  cities  will  understand  how  easily  trouble  might 
have  followed  such  an  edict  in  Korea.  But  the  alert  Ameri- 
can Minister,  the  Honorable  Horace  N.  Allen,  took  such 
prompt  and  decisive  measures  that  the  plot  was  a  fiasco. 
For  a  time  the  situation  was  strained,  especially  in  the  south, 
where  Japan  was  suspected  of  inciting  sedition  as  an  excuse 
for  landing  more  troops  to  protect  her  interests,  especially 
the  telegraph-line  and  the  projected  railway  to  Seoul.  But 
the  alarm  quickly  subsided.  Mr.  W.  H.  Griffin,  a  mining 
engineer,  who  was  badly  beaten  and  robbed  of  one  thousand 
dollars  and  most  of  his  personal  effects  by  nine  Koreans 
in  March,  1909,  may  be  pardoned  for  doubting  the  peace- 
ableness  of  Koreans;  but  robbers  are  not  peculiar  to  Korea, 
and  a  man  who  is  known  to  be  carrying  such  a  sum  would 
not  be  safe  in  many  parts  of  Europe  and  America.  The 
normal  experience  of  a  foreign  traveller  is  one  of  marked 
kindliness  and  consideration.  The  best  that  the  people 
have  is  promptly  and  gladly  placed  at  his  disposal.  A  mis- 
sionary writes  that  when  foreign  ladies  arrive  at  night  at 
an  inn,  the  guests  who  are  occupying  the  one  small  private 
room  will  invariably  vacate  and  go  to  the  common  room, 
crowded  with  fifteen  or  twenty  bad-smelling  horsemen  and 
coolies.  They  almost  always  do  this  for  a  foreign  man, 
and  they  accept  his  proffered  apologies  with  the  reply: 
"Are  you  not  the  American  guest?" 

We  had  some  opportunity  to  test  this  disposition  of  the 
people,  for  in  our  journey  through  the  ulterior  we  passed 
through  scores  of  villages  far  from  the  beaten  track  of  travel, 
ate  in  native  huts  and  slept  in  native  inns,  with  our  luggage 
and  supplies  piled  in  the  open  courtyards.  The  people 
manifested  great  curiosity,  following  us  in  crowds  through 
the  streets,  forming  a  solid  wall  of  humanity  about  us  at 
every  stop,  and  peering  at  us  through  every  door,  window, 
and  crevice.  But  not  once  was  the  slightest  insolence 
shown,  and  not  a  penny's  worth  was  stolen.  Everywhere 
we  were  treated  respectfully  and  with  a  kindly  hospitality 
which  quite  won  our  hearts.  The  best  that  a  village  af- 


60  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

forded  was  gladly  placed  at  our  disposal,  and  while  prices 
were  never  excessive,  in  several  places  the  people  refused 
to  receive  any  compensation.  We  usually  sent  word  ahead, 
so  that  accommodations  might  be  ready  for  us,  and  when- 
ever we  did  so,  groups  of  people  would  walk  out  several 
miles  to  meet  us,  sometimes  in  a  heavy  rain.  The  invariable 
salutation  was  a  smiling  inquiry:  "Have  you  come  in 
peace?"  And  when  we  left,  the  people  would  escort  us 
some  distance  on  our  way,  and  then  politely  bid  us  good-by 
in  the  words:  "May  you  go  in  the  peace  of  God !"  These 
were  usually  Christians,  but  we  saw  multitudes  who  were 
not,  and  while  the  non-Christians  were  noticeably  more 
unkempt  than  the  Christians,  they,  too,  were  invariably 
kind  and  respectful.  He  must  be  a  hard-hearted  man  who 
could  move  among  such  a  people  without  feeling  himself 
drawn  to  them  in  kindly  ways. 

That  Koreans  are  patient  may  not  be  wholly  to  their 
credit,  as  there  are  limits  to  that  virtue,  especially  when, 
as  in  Korea,  it  degenerates  into  apathy.  But  not  all  of  the 
Koreans  have  been  meekly  acquiescent.  A  sense  of  in- 
justice will  occasionally  goad  even  apathetic  people  to  deeds 
of  unreasoning  fury;  and  when  they  once  begin  to  "run 
amuck,"  they  are  not  apt  to  distinguish  between  friend 
and  foe.  Because  the  Roman  Catholic  priests  of  Quelpart 
allowed  some  of  their  converts  to  serve  as  collectors  of  in- 
creased taxes  about  a  couple  of  decades  ago,  the  populace 
arose  in  a  frenzy  and  murdered  a  large  part  of  the  Chris- 
tian community.  Drought  sometimes  increases  the  general 
unrest,  and  the  desire  of  foreign  nations  to  find  excuse  for 
interference  was  long  a  fruitful  source  of  trouble,  as  secret 
emissaries  did  not  always  hesitate  to  foment  disturbances. 

The  recklessness  of  despair  found  expression  in  the  no- 
torious Tong-hak  Society.  Some  of  the  members  of  this 
society  were  mere  robbers;  but  many  were  men  who  had 
been  goaded  to  desperation  by  wrong  and  oppression,  and 
who  had  determined  to  struggle  for  better  conditions  at 
any  cost  to  themselves.  The  movement  made  trouble  in 
1893.  It  began,  like  the  Tai-ping  Rebellion  in  China,  as 


THE  KOREAN  PEOPLE  61 

a  religious  reformation.  Its  founder,  Choi  Chei  Ou,  who 
had  seen  something  of  the  Roman  Catholic  missionaries 
and  had  vaguely  discerned  some  of  their  teachings,  alleged 
that  he  had  a  vision  in  1859  at  his  home  in  Kyeng-chu,  in 
southern  Korea.  He  forthwith  proclaimed  a  new  faith 
which  was  to  include  the  best  elements  of  Confucianism, 
Buddhism,  Taoism,  and  Romanism,  and  which  he  called 
Tong-hak,  or  Eastern  Learning.  Followers  multiplied. 
Loyal  at  first  to  the  dynasty,  the  hostility  of  the  government 
and  the  sorrows  of  the  people  developed  the  Tong-haks, 
like  the  Tai-pings  in  China,  into  revolutionaries.  Con- 
vinced that  foreign  influences  were  undermining  the  ancient 
institutions  of  the  country  and  arousing  the  anger  of  the 
gods,  the  Tong-haks  were  avowedly  anti-foreign.  They 
strenuously  urged  the  preservation  of  the  old  ways,  and 
presented  appeals  to  the  throne  calling  for  the  extermina- 
tion of  foreign  traders,  the  severing  of  all  relations  with 
other  nations,  and  the  prohibition  of  alien  religions.  The 
movement  quickly  became  a  menacing  one,  and  for  a  time 
there  was  considerable  alarm,  not  only  at  the  court,  but 
among  foreigners.  But  after  some  bloody  fights  the  ring- 
leaders were  arrested  and  the  danger  passed.  In  1894  the 
Tong-haks  availed  themselves  of  the  strained  relations 
between  China  and  Japan  to  make  a  fresh  outbreak.  They 
murdered  a  French  missionary,  plundered  Roman  Catholic 
villages,  burned  their  houses,  and  started  a  revolutionary 
propaganda  which  assumed  formidable  proportions  and 
helped  to  precipitate  the  China-Japan  War.  The  society 
was  conquered,  but  not  subdued.  It  continued  to  exist 
with  secret  members  in  various  parts  of  the  country.  Ad- 
vantage was  taken  of  every  opportunity  to  stir  up  trouble, 
and  from  time  to  time  inflammatory  proclamations  were 
issued.  These  proclamations  usually  stated  in  plain  lan- 
guage the  grievances  of  the  people,  arraigned  the  magis- 
trates as  cruel  and  corrupt,  and  called  for  reforms  in  every 
department  of  the  government. 

The  Boxer  uprising  of  1900  in  China  gave  new  hope  to 
the  Tong-haks,  and  they  did  their  utmost  to  stir  up  a 


62  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

similar  uprising  in  Korea.  The  following  year  they  again 
fomented  discord,  and  might  have  succeeded  in  seriously 
endangering  the  foreigners  in  Korea  if  the  American  Min- 
ister, Doctor  Allen,  had  not  gained  timely  knowledge  of  the 
plot  and  taken  energetic  measures  to  thwart  it.  The  year 
1904  was  anticipated  with  some  apprehension  because  one 
of  the  ancient  sages  had  prophesied  that  it  would  be  a  year 
of  crisis  in  Korea.  The  hostilities  between  Russia  and 
Japan  were  hailed  as  a  fulfilment  of  this  prophecy.  The 
Tong-haks  and  the  Russians  were  believed  to  be  in  secret 
alliance,  and  there  were  uncanny  rumors  of  a  general  mas- 
sacre. The  swift  and  decisive  expulsion  of  the  Russians 
by  the  Japanese  prevented  trouble;  but  the  Tong-haks 
became  the  rallying-point  of  the  Koreans  who  hated  the 
Japanese  and  of  the  restless  elements  which  war  always 
multiplies,  and  they  began  a  guerilla  warfare  which  gave 
the  Japanese  no  small  annoyance  before  it  was  finally 
stamped  out. 

One  cannot  sympathize  with  lawlessness,  but  there  was 
much  in  the  Tong-hak  movement  to  stir  the  interest  of 
thoughtful  men.  With  all  its  errors,  it  represented  the 
groping  of  patriotic  men  after  better  things.  It  is  true 
that  many  were  fanatics,  blinded  by  prejudice  and  passion, 
and  that  they  were  joined  by  vicious  men  who  sought  only 
plunder  and  rapine.  Desperate  men  are  not  apt  to  be 
wise  and  gentle,  and  revolutionary  movements  have  always 
attracted  the  outlaws  of  society.  If  David's  cave  of  Adul- 
lam  became  a  refuge  for  "every  one  that  was  in  distress, 
and  every  one  that  was  in  debt,  and  every  one  that  was  dis- 
contented," it  is  small  wonder  that  the  Tong-haks  were 
reinforced  from  the  same  classes.  The  history  of  this 
Korean  struggle  is  stained  with  plots  and  conflagrations  and 
pillagings,  in  which  the  innocent  often  suffered  with  the 
guilty;  but  some  day  a  poet  may  arise  who  will  have  the 
largeness  of  heart  and  the  clearness  of  vision  to  discern  the 
pathos  and  the  tragedy  of  obscure,  ignorant,  poverty- 
stricken  men,  fighting  lonely  battles  against  insurmountable 
odds,  without  the  inspiration  of  the  world's  recognition, 


THE  KOREAN  PEOPLE  63 

and  leaving  their  bones  to  the  dreaded  Oriental  calamity 
of  unburied  neglect,  because  in  a  crude  way  they  believed 
that  justice  and  patriotism  demanded  the  sacrifice. 

It  is  easy  to  pick  out  the  defects  of  any  people  and,  by 
concentrating  attention  upon  them,  create  an  unfavorable 
impression  of  their  worth.  But  Americans  do  not  like  to 
be  judged  by  the  worst  elements  of  their  society,  or  by  the 
follies  of  those  who  should  know  better.  The  annals  of 
Korea  contain  no  more  savage  atrocity  than  the  burning  of 
negroes  at  the  stake,  which  occurred  twice  in  the  United 
States  within  the  months  that  these  pages  were  written. 
The  sorrowful  conditions  in  Korea  have  been  largely  due 
to  injustice,  oppression,  and  superstition.  With  good  gov- 
ernment, a  fair  chance,  and  a  Christian  basis  of  morals, 
I  believe  that  the  Koreans  would  develop  into  a  fine  people. 


CHAPTER  IV 
KOREAN  CUSTOMS,  EDUCATION,   AND  LITERATURE 

THE  manners  and  customs  of  a  people  are  always  an  in- 
teresting study.  They  not  only  have  the  charm  of  novelty, 
and  perhaps  oddity,  to  a  foreign  observer,  but  they  often 
afford  a  clew  to  historical  relationships  or  to  characteristics 
of  temperament  or  environment. 

Take,  for  example,  the  dress  of  the  Koreans.  It  is  at 
once  distinctive,  no  matter  how  many  other  nationalities 
may  be  represented  about  him.  The  fashion  came  from 
China  many  centuries  ago.  The  Chinese  long  since  modi- 
fied their  garb  to  suit  their  own  tastes  and  those  of  their 
Manchu  rulers;  but  the  Korean  dresses  to-day  as  the 
Chinese  did  a  thousand  years  ago.  The  outer  clothing  of 
the  man  consists  of  loose  trousers  and  a  flowing  tunic  of 
ample  length  and  fulness.  Gradations  of  rank  are  indi- 
cated by  the  color  and  material.  Only  officials  may  wear 
blue.  If  they  are  of  low  grade  the  material  must  be  cotton, 
but  above  the  third  rank  it  may  be  silk.  With  the  excep- 
tion of  officials,  the  entire  nation  wears  white,  which  is  the 
color  for  mourning,  a  decidedly  more  sensible  and  artistic 
one  than  the  sombre  black  of  Western  peoples.  Custom 
requires  that  this  mourning  color  shall  be  worn  for  three 
years  after  the  death  of  a  relative,  and  that  when  a  king 
dies  the  whole  nation  shall  be  arrayed  in  white  for  a  year. 
As  some  member  of  a  large  family  circle  is  quite  apt  to  die 
in  three  years,  particularly  in  times  of  pestilence,  and  as 
three  kings  died  in  a  single  decade,  the  people  came  to  the 
conclusion  that  it  was  easier  and  cheaper  to  wear  white 
all  the  time  than  to  buy  special  mourning  clothes  so  often. 
A  city  street  filled  with  these  leisurely  moving,  white-robed 
figures,  and  a  Sunday  congregation  arrayed  in  spotless 
white  are  picturesque  to  a  high  degree. 

64 


CUSTOMS,  EDUCATION,  AND  LITERATURE         65 

The  washing  of  these  garments  is  the  bane  of  the  Korean 
wife.  She  takes  them  to  pieces  every  time,  pounds  or 
thrashes  them  on  stones  by  the  riverside,  spreads  them  out  in 
the  sun  to  dry,  and  "irons"  by  beating  them  with  sticks  in 
her  house.  The  monotonous  rat-tat-tat  of  these  sticks  can 
be  heard  at  all  hours  of  the  day  and  night.  They  are  among 
the  first  things  that  the  visitor  hears  when  he  enters  a  village 
and  the  last  when  he  leaves  it,  so  that  he  wonders  whether 
the  Korean  woman  ever  sleeps.  Such  methods  of  launder- 
ing are  rather  hard  on  the  clothes;  but  when  they  survive, 
they  come  forth  with  a  soft  gloss  which  makes  the  proud 
husband  a  strikingly  attractive  figure.  Unfortunately 
white  is  attractive  only  when  it  is  clean,  and  perhaps  one 
reason  why  the  average  Korean  impresses  one  as  the  most 
untidy  man  in  Asia  is  because  his  white  clothing  makes 
conspicuous  a  dirt  which  the  Chinese  dark-blue  cloth  does 
not  so  readily  show. 

The  shoe  is  not  so  distinctive — a  coarse  sandal  of  twisted 
rice  straw  for  the  poor,  and  Chinese  footwear  for  those  who 
are  able  to  afford  it.  The  hat  is  more  unique.  It  has  a 
broad  brim,  a  small  round  crown  considerably  too  small 
for  the  head,  and  it  is  tied  under  the  chin.  Some  of  the 
poorest  people  wear  hats  made  of  split  bamboo,  but  every 
Korean  covets  a  tile  of  silk  thread  or  horsehair.  A  boy 
engaged  to  be  married  wears  a  white  hat  of  a  special  shape, 
but  the  hats  of  men  are  black.  From  a  foreign  view-point 
the  hat  is  absurdly  unbecoming,  but  the  Korean  highly 
prizes  it,  and  often  pays  for  it  a  sum  which  he  can  ill  afford. 
But  while  the  foreigner  smiles  at  this  grotesque  head  cover- 
ing, I  fear  that  even  the  Korean's  habitual  courtesy  would 
be  severely  strained  if  he  could  see  some  of  the  monstrosi- 
ties with  which  the  women  of  New  York  "adorn"  their 
heads. 

The  method  of  dressing  the  hair  was,  however,  the  most 
distinctive  feature  of  a  Korean  of  the  old  regime.  He  wore 
it  parted  in  the  middle  and  hanging  in  a  long  braid  until  he 
was  betrothed,  when  he  was  invested  with  the  far-famed 
topknot.  This  investiture  was  an  important  event  in  the 


66  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

life  of  a  Korean.  There  was  an  elaborate  ceremony  in  the 
presence  of  a  large  gathering  of  friends,  and  the  clothing 
and  the  hat  provided  for  the  candidate  were  as  costly  as 
the  means  of  the  family  permitted.  The  youth  was  seated 
with  his  face  toward  the  point  of  the  compass  which  the 
geomancer  had  indicated  as  lucky.  The  master  of  cere- 
monies then  solemnly  unwound  the  boyish  plait,  shaved 
a  spot  about  three  inches  in  diameter  on  the  top  of  the 
head,  and  pulled  the  hair  tightly  about  it  into  a  topknot 
about  three  inches  in  height,  and  an  inch  and  a  half  in 
diameter.  A  cap  was  placed  upon  the  head  and  closely 
tied,  and  above  all  was  placed  a  new  hat.  The  candidate 
was  now  supposed  to  have  passed  from  youth  to  manhood, 
and  "the  man,"  although  still  at  the  age  that  we  would 
call  boyish,  ceremoniously  bowed  to  all  his  relations,  be- 
ginning with  the  eldest,  and  offered  solemn  sacrifices  to  his 
deceased  ancestors.  A  feast  followed  and  formal  calls 
were  made  upon  friends  of  the  family.  The  cost  of  this 
ceremony,  with  its  feasting  and  supplies  of  new  clothing 
and  the  attendant  expenses,  was  often  so  great  as  to  involve 
a  family  in  debt  for  years. 

In  old  Korea,  the  topknot  was  as  characteristic  as  the 
queue  in  China,  and  far  more  significant,  for  it  originated, 
not  as  a  badge  of  submission  to  a  conqueror,  but  as  an  ex- 
pression of  the  people's  ancient  and  venerated  beliefs. 
The  tenacity  with  which  the  Koreans  cling  to  their  ancient 
customs  was  illustrated  when  the  Japanese,  after  their 
occupation  of  the  country  in  the  war  with  Russia,  undertook 
to  make  certain  reforms.  In  spite  of  the  fact  that  they 
were  Orientals  themselves  and  therefore  supposed  to  know 
something  of  the  power  of  Asiatic  customs,  they  were  ap- 
parently of  the  opinion  that  they  could  reform  Korea  out 
of  hand.  The  Koreans  sullenly  listened  to  orders  to  shorten 
and  narrow  their  capacious  sleeves,  wear  coats  of  a  certain 
color,  make  hat-brims  of  prescribed  width,  and,  in  the  case 
of  women,  to  uncover  their  faces  when  on  the  streets. 
But  the  limit  of  self-control  was  passed  when  the  subser- 
vient acting  home  Minister  of  the  Korean  Government 


CUSTOMS,  EDUCATION,  AND  LITERATURE         67 

commanded  the  cutting  of  the  topknot — the  sign  and  seal 
of  old  Korea,  the  hall-mark  of  Korean  nationality,  and  the 
embodiment  of  Korean  traditions  and  pride  of  race.  The 
excitement  and  consternation  were  unparalleled.  The 
Koreans  submitted  with  little  or  no  protest  to  many  other 
changes  that  would  have  aroused  an  Anglo-Saxon  people, 
but  when  their  sacred  topknot  was  touched  the  anger  of 
this  peaceable  race  flamed  up.  "Tender  associations  of 
early  manhood,  honored  family  traditions,  ghostly  super- 
stition, the  anger  and  disgust  of  ancestral  spirits,  the  iron 
grip  of  long  custom,  the  loathing  of  the  effeminate,  sensual, 
and  despised  Buddhist  priests,  all  forbade  this  desecration. 
Their  pride,  self-respect,  and  dignity  were  all  assailed  and 
crushed  under  foot.  Sullen,  angry  faces  were  seen  every- 
where, sounds  of  wailing  and  woe  were  heard  continually 
in  every  house,  for  the  women  took  it  even  harder  than  the 
men.  Farmers  and  carriers  of  food  and  fuel  refused  to  bring 
their  produce  to  market,  for  guards  stood  at  the  gates  and 
cut  off  with  their  swords  every  topknot  as  it  came  through." l 
The  capital  began  to  suffer  for  want  of  supplies.  Business 
was  paralyzed.  The  Japanese  regime  was  brief,  and  the 
order  was  soon  rescinded,  but  not  before  it  had  been  demon- 
strated that  it  is  a  serious  matter  to  tamper  with  a  Korean 
topknot. 

When  the  Japanese  regained  control  after  the  Russia- 
Japan  War,  they  renewed  their  efforts  to  abolish  the  top- 
knot. They  were  too  discreet  this  time  to  issue  an  order, 
but  they  succeeded  in  "persuading"  the  new  Emperor,  the 
Crown  Prince,  and  several  members  of  the  court  to  cut  off 
their  topknots  at  the  time  of  the  coronation,  August  27, 
1907;  and  under  royal  example  and  the  known  wishes  of 
their  new  rulers,  the  days  of  this  notable  native  custom  are 
passing  with  the  bound  feet  of  Chinese  women.  At  the 
time  of  my  first  visit  to  Korea,  in  1901,  I  did  not  see  a 
single  Korean  without  a  topknot.  During  my  second 
visit,  in  1909,  I  saw  hundreds  of  men  and  boys  who  had 
cut  their  hair  in  the  pompadour  fashion  of  the  Japanese. 

1  Mrs.  Underwood,  Fifteen  Years  Among  the  Top-Knots,  167-168. 


68  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

To-day  the  Christians,  the  boys  in  the  mission  schools, 
and  most  of  the  people  in  the  cities  have  adopted  the 
modern  style  and  the  topknot  is  rapidly  becoming  excep- 
tional. The  disappearance  of  this  venerable  symbol  is 
significant,  for  it  testifies,  more  eloquently  perhaps  than 
anything  else  could  do,  to  the  passing  of  ancient  Korea  and 
the  dawning  of  a  new  era. 

There  is  probably  no  other  country  in  the  world  where 
niceties  of  etiquette  are  more  rigidly  followed,  or  where  they 
signify  so  much.  The  foreign  visitor  who  calls  to  pay  his 
respects  to  the  local  magistrate  may  flatter  himself  that  he 
is  being  received  with  every  mark  of  distinction,  while  the 
Korean  attendants  are  chuckling  beneath  their  impassive 
exteriors  over  the  indignities  that  are  being  heaped  upon 
him.  For  example,  if  the  magistrate  has  high  regard  for 
his  visitor,  he  will  meet  him  at  the  outer  gate  of  the  yamen ; 
if  he  wishes  to  pay  him  only  ordinary  courtesy,  he  will 
meet  him  outside  of  the  middle  gate;  if  he  cares  little  about 
him,  he  will  meet  him  inside  the  middle  gate;  if  he  deems 
him  an  inferior,  he  will  greet  him  on  the  piazza;  and  if  he 
despises  him,  he  will  await  him  in  his  audience-chamber. 
The  location  of  the  chair  which  the  caller  is  to  occupy  is 
also  significant.  If  the  Korean  feels  that  his  visitor  is  of 
equal  rank,  the  chair  is  so  placed  that  the  caller  will  face 
the  east;  if  he  regards  him  as  a  subordinate,  he  will  see 
that  the  caller  faces  the  south;  and  if  he  has  contempt  for 
him,  the  caller  will  find  his  chair  facing  the  north;  the 
host  all  the  time  facing  the  west.  In  the  conversation  that 
ensues,  the  magistrate  indicates  his  respect  for  his  caller, 
or  his  lack  of  it,  by  the  terminations  of  his  words,  which  in- 
dicate varying  degrees  of  esteem  and  the  Korean's  concep- 
tion of  the  standing  of  his  guest. 

Etiquette  dominates  every  occasion  and  period  of  life 
and  reaches  its  climax  in  connection  with  death.  The 
Korean  Government  issued  an  official  Guide  to  Mourners, 
which  prescribed  the  necessary  forms  and  ceremonies  in 
minute  detail.  The  body  was  to  be  carefully  washed,  and 
then  laid  out  on  a  plank  which  had  been  painted  with  seven 


CUSTOMS,  EDUCATION,  AND  LITERATURE         69 

stars.  This  was  called  "the  star  board,"  and  in  popular 
speech  was  a  symbol  of  death.  Precise  instructions  were 
given  regarding  the  size  and  thickness  of  the  coffin,  the  way 
the  body  was  to  be  placed  in  it,  the  decoration  of  the  cham- 
ber in  which  the  coffin  was  to  lie,  when  and  how  the  weeping 
must  be  done,  and  what  clothing  the  mourner  must  wear 
as  he  entered  the  room  for  this  purpose.  The  interval  be- 
tween death  and  funeral  was  carefully  determined  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  rank  of  the  deceased.  A  common  man 
might  be  interred  in  three  days.  The  interval  lengthened 
with  the  importance  of  the  dead,  until  in  the  case  of  a  mem- 
ber of  the  royal  family  it  was  nine  months.  The  location 
of  the  grave  must  be  determined  with  special  care,  and  the 
site  selected  must,  if  possible,  be  on  high  ground  command- 
ing a  good  view.  For  the  funeral  every  act  was  minutely 
prescribed,  and  Dame  Fashion  in  Europe  and  America  is 
not  half  so  particular  in  these  matters  as  she  is  in  Korea. 
The  body  is  arrayed  in  red,  blue,  and  yellow  garments. 
The  hour  for  the  funeral  is  usually,  though  not  always,  at 
sunset,  so  that  the  colored  lanterns  used  on  such  occasions 
can  show  off  to  better  advantage.  The  bearers  wear  big 
yellow  hats  with  garlands  of  flowers,  which  are  blue  and 
pink  when  they  can  be  obtained.  The  chief  mourner  is 
clad  in  sackcloth,  and  is  almost  completely  covered  by  a 
huge  conical  bamboo  hat,  which  he  is  expected  to  wear  for 
a  considerable  period  after  the  funeral,  three  years  for  a 
father.  The  hat-brim  droops  so  low  that  it  completely 
conceals  the  head,  because  "heaven  is  angry  with  the 
mourner  and  does  not  wish  to  look  upon  his  face."  An- 
other mourner,  from  whose  hat  bits  of  colored  ribbon  are 
flying,  walks  backward  ringing  a  bell  and  chanting  a  dirge. 
The  coffin  is  borne  on  a  platform  under  a  cover  supported 
by  four  posts,  and  draped  with  curtains,  which  the  Koreans 
fondly  believe  to  be  very  handsome.  The  cover  is  usually 
surmounted  by  representations  of  birds,  and  streamers  of 
brightly  colored  ribbons  hang  from  the  sides.  Painted 
birds  and  dragons  are  apt  to  be  in  evidence,  and  a  variety 
of  musical  instruments  which  can  be  heard  afar.  Thus 


70  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

the  procession  moves  slowly  on,  the  pall-bearers  joining  in 
a  monotonous  chant,  and  sometimes  stopping  or  turning 
backward  for  a  short  distance  to  express  their  sorrowful 
reluctance  that  they  must  bear  one  whom  they  loved  to  the 
grave. 

Near  the  principal  cities  are  extensive  spaces  devoted  to 
graves.  Koreans  are  more  particular  about  their  last 
resting-place  than  about  the  place  where  they  spend  their 
lives.  They  do  not  object  to  low,  swampy  ground  for  their 
hovels,  and  they  huddle  their  houses  together  even  when 
there  is  no  apparent  necessity  for  doing  so.  But  when  this 
poor  man  dies,  he  must  have  a  well-kept  grave  on  a  hill- 
side commanding  a  fine  view.  Members  of  the  royal 
family  and  other  persons  of  high  rank  insist  on  generous 
spaces  about  their  graves;  and  as  kings  and  princes  and 
nobles  have  been  dying  for  centuries,  vast  areas  about  the 
capital  are  peopled  by  the  dead.  The  grave  of  a  noble 
is  a  high  mound  standing,  if  possible,  in  a  horseshoe- 
shaped  enclosure  on  a  terraced  hillside,  and  surrounded 
by  a  stone  fence.  A  little  altar  and  a  lantern  or  two,  also 
of  stone,  are  in  front  of  the  grave.  The  royal  tombs  are 
quite  imposing.  The  mounds,  altars,  and  lanterns  are  of 
larger  size;  a  temple  contains  memorial  tablets,  stately 
pine-trees  grow  about  them,  and  the  avenues  of  approach 
are  lined  with  grotesquely  carved  stone  figures  of  warriors, 
priests,  servants,  and  horses.1 

The  period  of  mourning  is  fixed  by  equally  stringent 
rules.  Even  if  a  man  is  about  to  be  married,  when  a  death 
occurs  in  the  family  he  must  postpone  his  wedding  for  a 
period  exactly  commensurate  with  the  closeness  of  his  re- 
lationship to  the  departed,  that  for  a  parent  or  a  grand- 
parent being,  as  we  have  seen,  three  years.  This  is  a  griev- 
ous hardship  in  a  country  where  a  man,  whatever  his  age, 
is  treated  as  a  boy  and  assigned  to  the  lowest  place  until 
he  has  a  wife,  and  where  the  postponement  of  his  hopes, 
and  especially  if  prolonged  by  other  deaths,  may  seriously 
delay  and  perhaps  altogether  prevent  the  birth  of  sons  who 

1  Mrs.  Isabella  Bird  Bishop,  Korea  and  Her  Neighbors,  pp.  61-62. 


CUSTOMS,  EDUCATION,  AND  LITERATURE         71 

can  provide  for  his  old  age  and  reverence  his  departed  spirit. 
In  the  Grammaire  Coreenne  a  Korean  is  represented  as  be- 
wailing his  hard  lot  as  follows: 

"My  parents,  thinking  of  my  marriage,  had  arranged  my  be- 
trothal; but  some  time  before  the  preparations  were  concluded,  my 
future  grandfather  died  and  it  became  necessary  to  wait  three  years. 
Hardly  had  I  put  off  mourning,  when  I  was  called  on  to  lament  the 
death  of  my  poor  father.  I  was  now  compelled  to  wait  still  another 
three  years.  These  three  years  finished,  behold  my  mother-in-law, 
who  was  to  be,  died  and  three  years  passed  away.  Finally,  I  had 
the  misfortune  to  lose  my  poor  mother,  which  required  me  to  wait 
again  three  years.  And  so,  three  times  four — a  dozen  years — have 
elapsed,  during  which  we  have  waited  the  one  for  the  other.  By  this 
time,  she  who  was  to  be  my  wife  fell  ill.  As  she  was  upon  the  point 
of  death,  I  went  to  make  her  a  visit.  My  intended  brother-in-law, 
came  to  see  me,  found  me,  and  said:  'Although  the  ceremonies  of 
marriage  have  not  been  made,  they  may  certainly  consider  you  as 
married,  therefore  come  and  see  her.'  Upon  his  invitation,  I  entered 
her  house,  but  we  had  hardly  blown  a  puff  of  smoke  one  before  the 
other  than  she  died.  Seeing  this,  I  have  no  more  wished  even  to 
dream  at  night.  I  am  not  yet  married.  You  may  understand,  then, 
why  I  have  neither  wife,  children  nor  home."  1 

Koreans  are  inveterate  gossipers.  The  rural  population 
is  not  scattered  on  farms  as  in  England  and  America,  but 
is  segregated  in  hamlets  for  protection  and  companionship. 
Privacy  is  impossible  hi  the  lightly  constructed  houses 
closely  huddled  together,  and  the  lack  of  any  form  of  public 
amusement  or  recreation  leaves  little  to  occupy  the  mind 
except  the  daily  chat  and  doings  of  neighbors.  The  larger 
towns  have  market-days  once  or  twice  a  week,  when  the 
villagers  throng  in  from  all  the  adjacent  hamlets,  their  bul- 
locks and  ponies  heavily  loaded  with  produce.  Shops  are 
few  and  small,  and  fruit,  grain,  vegetables,  utensils,  clothing, 
and  all  sorts  of  merchandise  are  exposed  on  mats  laid  in 
the  streets.  The  people  squat  about  them  and  news  flies 
easily  from  lip  to  lip.  The  day  is  spent  in  incessant  bar- 
gaining and  gossiping,  the  people  from  the  country  ex- 
changing their  produce  for  all  sorts  of  domestic  and  im- 

1  Quoted  by  Griffis  in  Korea  the  Hermit  Nation,  pp.  281-282. 


72  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

ported  articles  such  as  cotton  cloth,  wooden  combs,  pipes, 
tobacco,  straw  shoes,  dried  fish,  matches,  sugar,  matting, 
etc.  At  all  times  Koreans  are  fond  of  visiting  one  an- 
other's houses,  and  are  never  so  happy  as  when  they  are 
gathered  in  groups  smoking  and  retailing  the  stories  of  the 
community.  But  is  this  not  a  village  characteristic  the 
world  over?  Is  there  an  American  hamlet  in  which  the 
sayings  and  doings  of  every  one  are  not  recounted  with 
gusto  around  half  the  firesides  of  the  place?  Korean 
gossip  usually  has  the  merit  of  good  nature,  at  least,  which 
is  more  than  can  be  said  of  some  Western  gossip. 

There  are  times,  however,  when  a  dispute  waxes  hot  and 
results  in  a  Korean  "fight."  Voices  become  loud  and 
angry.  Speech  grows  bitter  and  filled  with  invective  and 
expressions  of  contempt.  Faces  are  contorted  with  pas- 
sion, eyes  glare,  and  gesticulation  is  frantic.  When  the 
frenzied  participants  begin  to  leap  up  and  down,  tear  their 
hair  and  foam  at  the  mouth,  the  spectator  from  the  West 
feels  sure  that  gory  murder  is  about  to  be  committed.  But 
the  war  is  ordinarily  one  of  words  rather  than  deeds,  and 
the  fighters  continue  to  hurl  maledictions  and  curses  at 
each  other  until  they  are  so  overcome  by  passion  that  they 
fall  to  the  ground  in  the  exhaustion  of  hysterical  collapse. 
Such  personal  quarrels  between  neighbors  do  not  mean  that 
Koreans  cannot  fight  in  right  good  earnest  against  a  com- 
mon enemy.  Korea  has  seen  many  bloody  battles,  as  we 
have  noted  in  other  pages;  but  common  disputes  are  not 
so  apt  to  issue  in  broken  heads  as  they  are  in  some  other 
lands. 

Woman  has  a  lower  place  in  Korea  than  in  China  or 
Japan.  She  has  less  freedom  and  less  influence.  Parents 
choose  her  husband,  all  details  are  managed  by  "a  go- 
between,"  and  the  bride  is  not  supposed  to  see  her  husband 
until  the  wedding-day.  After  that  he  deems  it  beneath 
his  dignity  to  converse  with  her  or  to  ask  her  opinion  about 
anything.  Her  function  is  merely  to  bear  him  the  coveted 
sons  and  otherwise  to  keep  out  of  sight  as  much  as  possible. 

There  is  no  family  life,  as  we  understand  the  term.    Re- 


CUSTOMS,  EDUCATION,  AND  LITERATURE         73 

spectable  women  of  any  social  standing  are  expected  to 
seclude  themselves  in  a  separate  part  of  the  house.  Until 
recently  it  was  deemed  a  reproach  for  a  woman  over  ten 
or  twelve  years  of  age  to  be  seen  by  any  man  except  her 
father  or  husband.  She  must  not  go  upon  the  streets 
without  special  permission,  and  then  only  when  heavily 
veiled,  borne  in  a  closed  chair,  and  accompanied  by  suitable 
attendants.  Women  of  the  lower  classes  live  like  beasts 
of  burden,  and  get  considerably  less  care.  Their  lives  are 
an  unending  drudgery.  They  toil  not  only  .in  the  house 
but  in  the  fields.  They  are  not  deemed  worthy  of  education. 
A  Korean  woman  is  not  supposed  to  have  any  individuality 
of  her  own.  The  name  given  her  at  birth  is  used  only  in 
her  own  family.  Outside  of  that  she  is  known  simply  as 
the  daughter  or  the  sister  or  the  mother  of  some  man. 
As  a  wife  her  identity  is  lost  in  that  of  her  husband.  Even 
her  parents  cease  to  use  the  name  which  they  gave  her  in 
infancy,  and  describe  her  by  the  name  of  the  place  where 
she  is  living.  A  husband  may  have  as  many  concubines 
and  dancing-girls  as  he  pleases,  but  a  wife  must  preserve 
her  virtue.  He  may  remarry  as  often  as  he  likes  if  his 
first  wife  or  wives  die;  but  a  widow  is  not  supposed  to  re- 
marry, and  if  she  does,  she  makes  herself  infamous,  and 
her  children  by  any  subsequent  marriage  are  regarded  as 
illegitimate.  "What  is  woman  in  Korea!"  bitterly  ex- 
claimed a  woman  to  a  missionary,  who  was  urging  her  to 
send  her  daughter  to  school.  "After  the  dogs  and  pigs 
were  made,  there  was  nothing  left  to  be  done,  so  woman 
was  created — lowest  of  the  low !" 

The  Korean  woman  has,  indeed,  certain  privileges,  in 
theory.  She  is  referred  to  with  terminations  that  indicate 
respect.  Men  make  way  for  her  chair  on  the  street.  The 
part  of  the  house  which  she  occupies  is  regarded  as  sacred 
to  her,  and  no  right-minded  Korean  would  think  of  tres- 
passing upon  it.  Even  a  criminal  may  not  be  sought  for 
in  a  woman's  room,  and  if  a  disgraced  official  should  take 
refuge  there,  he  could  not  be  arrested  unless  he  could  be 
lured  outside.  To  break  into  a  woman's  apartment  is  a 


74  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

crime  that  is  severely  punished.  When  the  missionaries 
first  went  to  Korea,  they  found  a  quaint  method  of  per- 
mitting women  to  go  abroad  without  scandal.  Instead  of 
having  a  curfew  for  children,  there  was  one  for  men. 
They  were  to  be  in  the  house  by  nine  o'clock  so  that  their 
wives  and  daughters  could  promenade  the  streets  without 
reproach.  If  a  man  had  to  be  out  after  that  hour  and  met 
a  woman,  he  was  expected  to  shield  his  face  with  a  fan  and 
hasten  from  her.  To  touch  her  or  even  speak  to  her  hi  such 
circumstances  was  a  punishable  offense. 

These  customs  belonged  to  the  Korea  which  is  now 
rapidly  passing  away.  The  lady  of  to-day  does  not  find 
the  streets  reserved  for  her  use  after  nine  o'clock,  nor  is  she 
treated  with  special  respect,  except  where  Christian  teach- 
ing has  improved  her  status.  She  is  still  a  pathetic  figure, 
ignorant,  superstitious,  and  old  and  withered  at  forty. 

One  cannot  leave  this  subject  without  some  reference  to 
the  gesang,  the  singing  and  dancing  girls  who  occupy  about 
the  same  place  in  society  as  the  geishas  of  Japan.  Some 
were  kept  by  the  government  and  court  ministers,  and  were 
supported  out  of  the  public  treasury.  There  were  usually 
about  seventy-five  connected  with  the  palace  in  Seoul, 
and  most  officials  and  wealthy  men  maintained  a  number, 
or  employed  them  for  special  occasions.  They  are  trained 
from  childhood  for  their  careers  and  are  taught  many  ac- 
complishments which  are  denied  to  other  girls.  As  they 
are  not  secluded  like  other  women,  they  are  more  in  evi- 
dence, and  the  greater  freedom  of  movement  which  they 
are  permitted  has  given  them  an  ease  of  manner  in  sharp 
contrast  with  the  timidity  and  even  awkwardness  of  the 
average  Korean  woman.  Their  singing  and  dancing  are 
features  of  most  entertainments.  The  moral  reputation 
of  the  gesang  is  bad.  In  spite  of  their  popularity  with 
officials,  the  prominence  they  are  given  at  entertainments, 
and  the  presents  and  fine  dresses  which  they  receive,  no 
Korean  would  think  of  marrying  one.  In  Japan  a  geisha 
occasionally  becomes  the  wife  of  a  man  of  good  position, 
but  there  is  no  such  possibility  in  the  life  of  a  Korean 


CUSTOMS,  EDUCATION,  AND  LITERATURE         75 

gesang.  She  is  simply  the  plaything  of  men,  a  pitiful  little 
figure  to  amuse  him  for  a  fleeting  time  and  then  to  be  cast 
out  to  die  in  neglect  and  abuse. 

The  language  of  Korea  differs  from  both  the  Chinese  and 
the  Japanese,  although  it  is  more  closely  related  to  the 
former  than  to  the  latter,  for  Korean  learning  originally 
came  from  China.  The  character  used  in  the  written  lan- 
guage is  the  Chinese,  and  Chinese  words  are  largely  employed 
in  the  conversation  and  literary  essays  of  the  higher  classes. 
The  pronunciation  is  quite  different  from  that  heard  in 
China  and  the  characters  themselves  have  undergone  some 
modifications.  A  different  alphabet  called  the  Un-mun  is 
in  use  among  the  common  people  who  can  read  and  write. 
It  consists  of  twenty-five  characters,  and  is  simplicity  it- 
self compared  with  the  Chinese  hieroglyphics.  It  is  be- 
lieved to  have  originated  with  a  Buddhist  priest  named 
Syel  Chong,  in  the  year  1446.  It  was  regarded  with  con- 
tempt until  the  missionaries,  finding  that  it  was  better 
adapted  to  their  use  than  the  cumbersome  Chinese  char- 
acters, and  more  easily  taught  to  the  illiterate  people, 
issued  many  of  their  books  and  tracts  in  it.  They  trans- 
lated the  New  Testament,  prepared  grammars  and  dic- 
tionaries, and  were  rapidly  rehabilitating  the  Un-mun  in 
some  such  way  as  Wyclif 's  translation  of  the  Bible  inaugu- 
rated a  new  era  for  English.  In  1895,  the  official  Gazette, 
which  hitherto  had  been  printed  only  in  Chinese  characters, 
adopted  a  combination  of  the  Un-mun  and  the  Chinese, 
and  for  some  time  before  the  Japanese  occupation  all  public 
edicts  were  in  the  Un-mun  as  well  as  in  the  Chinese 
character. 

The  Korean  language  is  a  very  difficult  one  for  a  for- 
eigner to  acquire,  partly  because  of  this  division  into  a 
sort  of  Koreanized  Chinese  and  a  vernacular  Un-mun,  and 
partly  because  each  tongue  presents  formidable  obstacles 
to  the  ears  and  vocal  organs  of  a  foreigner.  The  meaning 
of  a  given  word  is  largely  determined  by  inflection  and 
termination,  with  divisions  and  subdivisions  that  are  dis- 
tracting to  the  learner. 


76  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

The  literature  of  Korea  is  less  voluminous  and  valuable 
than  might  be  expected  when  one  considers  the  venera- 
tion in  which  scholarship  is  held,  and  the  official  positions 
that  were  supposed,  as  in  China,  to  be  the  rewards  of 
literary  merit.  The  compositions  that  were  most  admired 
seem  almost  absurd  when  judged  by  the  canons  of  Western 
learning,  abounding  in  quotations  from  the  classics,  pom- 
pous phrases,  rhetorical  flourishes,  and  endless  redundan- 
cies. Books  of  this  kind  are  numerous  enough.  The  royal 
library  in  the  palace  at  Seoul  is  a  notable  depository  of  such 
alleged  literature,  some  of  it  in  elaborate  and  costly  bind- 
ings. Books  in  the  Un-mun  are  more  common,  Seoul  alone 
having  a  number  of  circulating  libraries.  Unfortunately, 
most  of  the  volumes  are  not  only  valueless  as  literature,  but 
injurious  to  morals,  filled  with  coarse  jests  and  obscene 
details.  A  majority  of  the  common  people  can  neither  read 
nor  write,  but  every  hamlet  has  at  least  one  or  two  men 
who  serve  as  the  readers  and  story-tellers  of  the  com- 
munity, and  recite  the  books  to  groups  of  eager  listeners. 

The  folk-lore  songs  and  tales  are  often  interesting  and 
occasionally  of  real  worth.  Some  indicate  the  view  of  life 
which  finds  expression  in  the  Rubaiyat  of  Omar  Khayyam. 
The  author  of  that  Epicurean  poem  might  have  found  a 
congenial  spirit  in  the  writer  of  the  following  Korean  song: 

"  Time,  O  Time,  flee  not  away ! 

Fresh  spring's  ruddy  face  is  growing  old. 

If  we  don't  play  now,  when  shall  we  play  ? 

When  once  we  mortals  are  dead  and  cold, 

Like  the  mist  on  the  mountains  we  fade  away. 

Let  us  feast,  let  us  play. 

If  we  don't  play  now,  if  we  don't  feast  now, 

When  shall  we  feast,  and  when  shall  we  play  ?  " 

Another  poem  suggests  a  literary  vein  worthy  of  further 
exploration.  An  ambitious  youth  who  is  journeying  to  the 
capital  for  the  national  examinations  stops  to  rest  on  a 
mountainside,  and  as  he  muses  about  his  predecessors  who 
must  have  trodden  the  same  path  in  their  hope  of  fame, 


CUSTOMS,  EDUCATION,  AND  LITERATURE         77 

he  breaks  forth  into  a  poetic  summons  to  the  spirit  of  the 
mountain,  which  towers  above  him : 

"O  mountain  blue, 

Deliver  up  thy  lore.    Tell  me,  this  hour,  the  name 
Of  him  most  worthy — be  he  child,  or  man,  or  sage — 
Who  'neath  thy  summit,  hailed  to-morrow,  wrestling  with 
To-day  or  reached  out  memory's  hands  toward  yesterday. 
Deliver  up  thy  lore." 

At  this  point  the  youth  falls  asleep,  and  the  spirit  of  the 
mountain  tells  him  in  his  dreams  the  long  story  of  the 
worthy  ones  that  had  preceded  him.  As  he  awakes  and 
resumes  his  journey  he  implores  the  mountain  to  add  his 
name  to  the  honored  list: 

"  O  mountain  blue, 

Be  thou  my  cenotaph;  and  when,  long  ages  hence, 
Some  youth,  presumptuous,  shall  again  thy  secret  guess, 
Thy  lips  unseal,  among  the  names  of  them  who  claim 
The  guerdon  of  thy  praise,  I  pray  let  mine  appear. 
Be  thou  my  cenotaph." 

The  names  which  these  simple-hearted  people  give  to 
natural  objects  reveal  an  imagination  and  love  of  beauty 
in  strange  contrast  with  their  squalid  villages,  though  oc- 
casionally a  name  indicates  superstition  as  well  as  imagina- 
tion. Mountain-Facing-the-Sun,  White  Cloud,  The  Peak 
of  a  Thousand  Buddhas,  Heaven-Reaching,  Cloud-Toucher, 
Sword  Mountain,  Lasting  Peace,  and  Changing  Cloud  are 
names  given  to  some  of  their  mountains.  Sheet  of  Re- 
splendent Water,  Water-that-slides-as-straight-as-a-sword 
and  Falling  Snow  Cataract,  suggest  an  appreciation  of  the 
beauty  of  streams.  An  inn  which  has  a  fine  outlook  is 
called  The  House  Fronting  the  Moon.  Another,  which 
affords  a  view  of  the  sunrise,  is  called  The  House  of  the 
Morning  Sun.  Mighty  Fortress,  Rock-loving  Chamber, 
Cave  Spirit,  Morning  Star,  and  The  Chamber  Between  the 
Strong  Fortress  and  the  Tender  Verdure  are  other  charac- 
teristic names.  Even  the  yamens  of  the  officials  are  apt 


78  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

to  have  names  which  suggest  an  attractiveness  in  marked 
contrast  with  their  dilapidation,  such  as  Little  Flowery 
House,  Rising  Cloud,  Gate  of  Lapis  Lazuli,  and  Man- 
sion Near  the  Whirlpool.  These  are  but  a  few  illustrations 
of  names  all  over  the  country.  Almost  every  town,  river, 
valley,  or  natural  object  of  any  kind  has  a  name  which  indi- 
cates the  native  conception  of  its  beauty  or  of  some  other 
characteristic.1 

When  one  turns  to  the  intellectual  training  which  Koreans 
receive,  he  finds  the  emptiest  educational  system  imagina- 
ble. The  typical  Korean  school-teacher  was  a  solemn- 
looking  old  gentleman  who  wore  immense  spectacles,  which 
were  designed  not  to  aid  the  eyes  but  to  give  a  scholarly 
and  venerable  aspect  to  the  wearer.  The  pupils  squatted 
upon  the  floor,  swayed  their  bodies  backward  and  forward, 
and  monotonously  and  stridently  chanted  Chinese  classics. 

Such  schools  afforded  the  only  education  that  Korea 
could  boast  until  1884,  when,  largely  influenced  by  the 
American  Minister,  Mr.  Allen,  the  King  asked  the  govern- 
ment of  the  United  States  to  send  to  Korea  three  men  for 
educational  work.  The  American  Secretary  of  State  re- 
ferred the  request  to  General  John  Eaton,  then  United 
States  Commissioner  of  Education,  who  selected  Mr. 
Homer  B.  Hulbert,  Mr.  George  W.  Gilmore,  and  Mr. 
Dalzell  A.  Bunker,  all  three  being  students  in  Union  The- 
ological Seminary,  New  York  City.  They  arrived  in  Korea 
July  4,  1886,  when  a  thousand  people  a  day  were  dying  of 
cholera.  Undismayed,  the  three  young  men  immediately 
started  an  English  school  under  the  patronage  and  support 
of  the  government.  The  King  took  a  personal  interest  in 
the  institution,  and  for  several  years  conducted  the  examina- 
tions hi  person,  the  students  lying  prone  upon  the  floor 
before  his  Majesty.  The  course  of  the  young  American 
educators  was  not  a  smooth  one.  Western  pedagogical 
methods  did  not  harmonize  with  deeply  rooted  prejudices, 
official  jealousies  and  corruptions,  and  the  arbitrary  will 
of  a  King  who  was  often  petulant  and  exacting.  Mr.  Gil- 

1  Cf.  Griffis,  p.  233. 


CUSTOMS,  EDUCATION,  AND  LITERATURE         79 

more  returned  to  America  in  1888.  Mr.  Bunker  remained 
for  seven  years,  when  he  entered  the  Methodist  Mission. 
Mr.  Hulbert  resigned  after  a  service  of  five  years,  but  in 
1897,  at  the  urgent  request  of  the  King,  he  took  charge  of 
the  Government  Normal  School,  which  had  been  recently 
organized  and  had  been  superintended  by  a  Japanese  un- 
til the  murder  of  the  Queen.  This  school  became  quite 
influential  and  trained  a  considerable  number  of  young 
men  who,  after  their  graduation,  became  teachers  in  the 
government  common  schools  in  the  capital  and  prov- 
inces. 

Influenced  to  some  extent  by  the  Japanese,  the  official 
literary  examinations  were  abolished  in  1894,  and  a  Depart- 
ment of  Education  was  constituted  the  following  year. 
This  gave  a  new  impetus  to  the  desire  for  Western  learn- 
ing, and  for  a  time  the  outlook  was  more  promising.  But 
the  department  was  so  languidly  and  ineffectively  admin- 
istered that  progress  was  slow  and  fitful.  In  1899  the  gov- 
ernment founded  the  Royal  English  School  in  Seoul,  for 
the  sons  of  families  of  the  higher  classes,  erected  an  excel- 
lent building,  and  asked  Professor  Hulbert  to  transfer  his 
services  to  it.  He  quickly  made  it  influential,  but  the  gov- 
ernment never  adequately  supported  it,  or  for  that  matter 
any  of  the  other  schools  under  its  care.  When  the  Japa- 
nese came  the  government  system  included  only  fifty 
schools,  most  of  them  with  a  mere  handful  of  pupils,  and 
the  national  budget  assigned  only  $162,792  to  education, 
and  $135,074  of  this  was  expended  in  Seoul,  leaving  only 
$27,718  for  all  the  rest  of  the  country.  A  few  French, 
Russian,  and  Japanese  schools  followed  the  establishment 
of  the  Royal  English  School,  and  were  conducted  with 
varying  degrees  of  success,  but  they  were  not  important 
enough  to  affect  materially  the  prevailing  intellectual 
stagnation. 

We  are  discussing  now  the  educational  methods  of  old 
Korea  prior  to  the  Japanese  occupation,  and  we  may, 
therefore,  reserve  for  subsequent  discussion  the  notable 
later  increase  in  the  number  and  quality  of  mission  schools 


80  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

and  the  programme  of  the  Japanese  Bureau  of  Education. 
Suffice  it  here  that  it  was  not  until  after  the  year  1900  that 
modern  educational  facilities  began  to  be  available  for  any 
appreciable  number  of  Koreans,  and  even  then  they  were 
on  a  very  limited  scale  for  the  first  decade  of  the  century. 
This  fact  should  be  taken  into  account  in  forming  a  fair 
judgment  regarding  the  intelligence  and  mental  develop- 
ment of  the  Korean  people. 


CHAPTER  V 
RELIGIOUS  BELIEFS  OF  THE  KOREANS 

THE  traveller  in  Korea  is  impressed  by  the  absence  of 
those  outward  manifestations  of  religion  which  are  so 
numerous  in  other  Asiatic  lands.  There  is  no  temple  in 
all  Seoul,  if  we  except  a  poor  Confucian  one.  Outside  of 
the  city  there  is  one*  to  the  God  of  War,  but  few  Koreans 
ever  visit  it.  Throughout  the  country  the  evidences  of 
public  worship  are  few  and  far  between.  One  who  is  fa- 
miliar with  the  innumerable  temples  in  Japan,  China,  and 
Siam,  is  at  first  disposed  to  regard  Korea  as  a  land  without 
a  religion. 

A  closer  study  will  show  that,  while  there  is  no  out- 
wardly established  religion  with  its  temples  and  prescribed 
observances,  there  are  religious  customs  which  have  great 
power  over  the  lives  of  the  people.  Indeed  Korea  may  be 
said  to  have  three  religions.  Buddhism  entered  from  China 
as  far  back  as  371  A.  D.  It  attained  great  influence,  and 
its  numerous  priests  included  some  of  the  ablest  men  in 
the  kingdom.  Great  monasteries  on  some  of  the  moun- 
tains still  attest  the  wealth  and  power  which  Buddhism 
once  enjoyed.  The  buildings  are  massive,  and  the  libraries 
contain  rare  old  books  and  manuscripts.  The  temples  are 
richly  adorned,  and  their  treasure-boxes  are  filled  with  the 
gifts  of  kings  and  princes.  Some  of  these  monasteries  were 
established  as  far  back  as  the  sixth  century,  and  their  ap- 
pearance still  testifies  to  the  power  which  Buddhism  long 
wielded  in  the  Hermit  Nation.  Few  travellers  see  them, 
for  they  are  in  remote  parts  of  the  country,  and  are  rather 
difficult  of  access.  Mrs.  Bishop  says  that  at  Keum  Kang 
San  in  the  Diamond  Mountains,  she  found  four  of  these 
great  monasteries,  whose  shrines  were  the  headquarters  of 

81 


82  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

about  four  hundred  and  fifty  nuns  with  a  thousand  paid 
servitors. 

Many  Koreans  annually  visit  the  famous  mountain  mon- 
asteries. A  charitable  judgment  may  consider  a  few  of 
them  devout  pilgrims,  but  a  large  majority  of  the  alleged 
votaries  are  far  from  religious  in  spirit  and  purpose.  What 
Hamel  wrote  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago  has  been 
true  ever  since:  "The  nobles  frequent  the  monasteries  very 
much  to  divert  themselves  there  with  common  women  or 
others  they  carry  with  them,  because  they  are  generally 
deliciously  seated  and  very  pleasant  for  prospect  and  fine 
gardens.  So  that  they  might  better  be  called  pleasure- 
houses  than  temples,  which  is  to  be  understood  of  the 
common  monasteries,  where  the  religious  men  love  to  drink 
hard."1 

Like  the  Jesuits  in  some  European  countries,  the  fond- 
ness of  Buddhist  monks  for  political  intrigue  resulted  in 
their  overthrow.  They  made  themselves  so  disliked  and 
feared  in  connection  with  the  preceding  dynasty,  and  were 
so  generally  held  responsible  for  its  downfall,  that  they 
lost  practically  all  their  power,  and  for  more  than  five  hun- 
dred years  Buddhist  priests  were  forbidden  to  enter  the 
capital.  Korean  Buddhism  has  decayed  until  it  now  re- 
tains hardly  a  vestige  of  its  former  power,  and  the  monks 
are  among  the  most  despised  of  men.  They  well  deserve 
the  contempt  in  which  they  are  held.  They  are  ignorant 
and  superstitious,  unfamiliar  even  with  their  own  religion, 
and  understanding  only  a  few  of  its  simplest  rites.  Their 
moral  reputation  is  exceedingly  bad.  I  saw  several  of  them 
outside  the  walls  of  Seoul,  but  they  appeared  to  have  but  a 
small  following,  and  they  looked  dejected  and  dirty.  It 
was  easy  to  identify  them  by  their  shaven  heads,  beehive- 
shaped  hats,  grass-cloth  coats,  rosary,  and  staff. 

In  their  days  of  power  and  prestige  Korean  Buddhists 
sent  missionaries  to  Japan,  and  the  Island  Empire  was  con- 
verted to  the  faith.  But  modern  Japanese  Buddhism  is 
ashamed  of  its  parentage.  In  1876  one  of  the  more  pro- 

1  Quoted  by  Lord  Curzon  in  Problems  of  the  Far  East,  p.  105. 


RELIGIOUS  BELIEFS  OF  THE  KOREANS  83 

gressive  Buddhist  sects  of  Japan,  the  Shin,  sent  represen- 
tatives to  Korea  to  see  if  they  could  not  win  the  people  to 
a  purer  type  of  Buddhism.  They  managed  to  convert  a 
number  of  young  Koreans,  six  of  whom  went  to  Japan  to 
receive  a  special  education  in  the  Shin  School  at  Kyoto; 
but  the  effort  was  short-lived.  Buddhism  in  Korea  ap- 
peared to  be  dead  beyond  possibility  of  resurrection.  Since 
the  country  has  been  incorporated  into  the  Empire  the 
Buddhists  of  Japan  have  been  making  more  resolute  efforts 
to  revive  Buddhism  in  Korea.  A  large  majority  of  the 
Japanese  who  have  permanently  settled  in  the  peninsula  of 
course  are  Buddhists.  They  have  brought  priests  from  the 
mother  country,  and  are  building  temples,  establishing 
Buddhist  Sunday-schools,  and  circulating  Buddhist  litera- 
ture. A  definite  propaganda  has  been  undertaken,  and 
Buddhism  may  once  more  take  its  place  as  one  of  the  re- 
ligions of  Korea. 

Confucianism  is  generally  considered  one  of  the  religions 
of  Korea,  coming  of  course  from  China,  from  which  Korea 
received  its  literature  and  civilization.  Confucius  would 
probably  be  as  much  surprised  as  Gautama  would  be  if 
the  two  sages  could  visit  Korea  and  see  what  passes  for 
their  respective  religions.  The  Koreans  have  departed 
more  widely  from  true  Confucianism  than  the  Chinese,  for 
their  temperament  is  not  so  practical  and  materialistic, 
and  they  craved  a  faith  more  emotional  and  mystical. 
But  they  have  all  the  Chinese  reverence  for  ancestors,  and 
their  customs  in  this  respect  are  thoroughly  Confucian. 
Filial  piety  is  highly  rewarded.  A  man  who  does  not  rever- 
ence his  father,  living  or  dead,  is  deemed  the  worst  of  repro- 
bates. Obedience  does  not  always  extend  to  the  mother, 
but  the  father  is  regarded  with  a  reverence  bordering  upon 
awe,  a  son  sometimes  kneeling  in  the  street  when  his  father 
approaches.  To  be  disrespectful  to  a  parent  is  to  commit 
a  serious  offense;  to  strike  him  is  to  deserve  capital  punish- 
ment; to  fail  to  mourn  for  him  on  his  death  the  prescribed 
period  of  thirty-six  months  is  a  disgrace,  and  if  the  son 
is  an  official  he  must  retire  from  office  for  that  purpose. 


84  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

A  Korean  Confucian  tract  states  that  the  Emperor  U  Jai-sun 
(2255-2205  B.  C.)  gathered  his  disciples  together  and  taught 
them  the  principles  of  filial  etiquette,  which  included  the 
following  instructions: 

"Sons  must  rise  at  cock-crow.  .  .  .  When  properly  dressed,  they 
must  present  themselves  before  their  parents  and  inquire  of  them 
whether  the  room  is  warm  and  everything  is  to  their  comfort.  .  .  . 
There  are  many  ways  in  which  a  son  is  to  serve  his  parents.  If  their 
bodies  itch,  he  is  to  scratch  them;  when  they  wash,  to  hold  the  bowl 
so  that  the  parents  may  bathe  in  comfort,  and  when  ready  for  it  to 
hand  them  the  towel;  to  respectfully  inquire  what  they  will  take 
to  eat,  and  then  with  honor  to  serve  the  meal;  to  wait  until  a  portion 
of  the  food  is  eaten  so  as  to  ascertain  whether  it  is  to  their  taste  and 
then  to  retire.  After  the  meal,  both  son  and  daughter-in-law  should 
go  to  the  parents  to  learn  from  them  whether  there  is  anything  they 
wish  done  or  errand  to  run.  .  .  .  When  nothing  has  been  given 
them  to  do,  to  remain  where  the  parents  are,  so  that  they  may  receive 
their  orders.  When  spoken  to,  always  to  reply  in  humility  and  never 
to  answer  back.  .  .  .  There  are  a  number  of  things  that  must  not 
be  done  in  the  presence  of  a  parent — to  yawn;  to  peep  about;  to 
blow  the  nose;  if  the  body  is  cold  not  to  don  extra  clothes  before 
them;  however  one's  body  may  itch,  not  to  scratch  it;  and  never  to 
laugh  at  anything  unless  the  parent  laughs.  .  .  .  Etiquette  requires 
that  a  son  shall  neither  sit  on  a  higher  level  nor  in  front  of  a  parent; 
that  he  shall  not  stand  or  walk  immediately  in  front  of  them.  .  .  . 
Reverence  of  parents  is  similar  to  the  carrying  of  a  bowl  full  of  water: 
unless  much  care  is  exercised  the  water  will  be  spilt.  In  like  manner, 
unless  much  care  is  taken  in  doing  all  things  respectfully  and  cor- 
rectly, an  offense  against  the  parent  is  committed.  ...  If  told  to 
do  a  thing  that  may  seem  impossible  to  perform,  it  is  nevertheless 
necessary  that  the  attempt  should  be  made." 

A  Korean  who  can  afford  it  usually  has  a  small  separate 
building  in  the  rear  of  his  house  where  he  keeps  his  ances- 
tral tablets,  and  where  at  stated  periods  he  offers  sacrifices 
to  his  deceased  parents.  A  missionary  writes  that  during 
an  itinerating  tour  he  saw  three  well-dressed  Korean  gentle- 
men and  their  servants  around  a  grave  on  the  crest  of  a 
hill,  worshipping  the  spirits  of  their  ancestors.  Offerings 
of  food  were  upon  the  ground  in  front  of  the  tomb,  before 
which  each  of  the  men  kneeled  in  turn,  prostrating  himself 


RELIGIOUS  BELIEFS  OF  THE  KOREANS  85 

reverently  several  times,  with  forehead  touching  the  ground. 
The  food-offerings  consisted  of  large  plates  of  sliced  dough- 
like  bread,  dishes  filled  with  candies,  generous  platters  of 
sliced  pork,  fried  chicken,  fish,  fresh  persimmons,  peeled 
pears  and  vegetables,  and  good-sized  jars  of  seul  (a  distilled 
liqueur).  Enormous  sums  in  the  aggregate  are  spent  in 
offerings  to  deceased  ancestors;  but  as  the  food  is  often 
eaten  by  the  living  after  it  has  been  presented  to  the  dead, 
the  waste  is  not  total. 

Koreans  would  interest  English  and  American  spiritual- 
ists. Professor  Hulbert  says  that  after  the  death  of  a  rela- 
tive or  friend  they  frequently  call  up  the  spirit  of  the  dead 
to  ask  it  questions,  or  call  up  the  ruler  of  Hades  to  bribe 
him  with  gifts  to  let  the  departed  one  off  easy.  The  spirit 
of  the  dead  frequently  "promises"  in  turn  to  do  what  he 
can  with  the  authorities  of  the  nether  world  to  bring  good 
luck  to  the  relatives  and  friends  left  behind.  This  is  all 
done  through  a  medium  or  sorceress,  who  goes  into  a  trance 
and  is  supposed  to  become  possessed  by  the  spirit  with  which 
the  people  wish  to  communicate.  Intelligent  Confucian- 
ists  in  China  are  probably  no  more  proud  of  their  co- 
religionists in  Korea  than  the  Buddhists  of  Japan  are  of 
theirs,  for  Korean  Confucianism  is  a  sorry  caricature  of 
their  faith. 

The  dominant  religion  of  Korea,  or  rather  the  dominant 
superstition,  is  Animism.  Indeed  Animism  is  the  heavy 
substratum  of  faith  in  practically  all  non-Christian  lands 
except  those  in  which  the  monotheistic  creed  of  Islam 
prevails,  and  even  there  traces  of  it  may  be  found.  It  is 
the  primitive  religion  outside  of  the  pale  of  revelation. 
Aboriginal  peoples  are  almost  invariably  animists.  Vast 
populations  in  Africa  are  wholly  animistic.  All  of  the 
elaborate  religious  systems  in  other  lands  found  Animism 
already  existing  and  no  one  of  them  wholly  succeeded  in 
displacing  it.  It  was  universal  in  China  when  Confucius 
arose,  and  his  ancestral  worship  is  really  a  development 
of  it.  Modern  China  is  pervaded  by  fear  of  evil  spirits,  and 
its  Buddhism  and  Taoism  are  now  half  animistic.  One  of 


86  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

the  chief  reasons  why  caste  was  developed  by  the  Brahmans 
of  India  was  the  prevalence  of  Animism  from  which  they 
wished  to  protect  then*  adherents.  Before  Buddhism  was 
introduced  into  Burma,  about  400  A.  D.,  all  the  people  were 
spirit-worshippers,  as  many  of  them  still  are.  They  pros- 
trate themselves  before  an  image  of  Buddha  in  a  temple, 
but  outside  of  it  they  tremble  at  the  thought  of  evil  spirits 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  Buddhism  is  not  supposed  to 
countenance  belief  in  demons. 

Animism  is  the  religion  of  fear,  of  ghosts  and  portents 
and  witches  and  demons.  Air,  earth,  and  water  teem  with 
them.  They  lurk  in  dark  ravines  and  whisper  menace 
from  tree-tops.  They  laugh  derisively  in  running  streams. 
They  shriek  in  the  tempest  and  roar  in  the  thunder,  and  the 
lightning  is  the  glaring  of  their  angry  eyes.  They  inhabit 
the  soil  so  that  its  surface  must  not  be  broken  by  the  hus- 
bandman or  the  miner  unless  incantations  or  propitiatory 
offerings  are  first  offered.  They  jeeringly  sit  on  roofs  and 
slyly  creep  into  windows  and  down  chimneys.  These  grin- 
ning, malignant  demons  haunt  every  waking  and  sleeping 
moment  of  human  life.  They  swarm  at  man's  birth,  and 
death  is  their  final  victory  over  him.  Terror  of  them 
weighs  upon  existence  like  a  nightmare,  and  turns  life  into 
a  hell  of  shuddering,  sobbing  fright.  Our  own  ancestors 
knew  this  baleful  fear.  German  forests  were  once  the 
scenes  of  animistic  incantations.  The  mysterious  rites  of 
ancient  Druidism  in  England  were  largely  prompted  by 
animistic  ideas,  and  belief  in  witchcraft  survived  in  proud 
New  England  until  the  last  century.  Even  in  this  twen- 
tieth century  some  of  their  descendants  are  not  free  from 
superstition.  Shall  we  wonder  that  the  simple-minded  and 
untutored  Korean  lives  under  the  baleful  spell  of  Animism  ? 
Beyond  a  ceremonial  observance  of  the  rites  of  ancestral 
worship,  it  is  the  only  religion  that  really  influences  him. 

Investigators  have  classified  Korean  spirits  under  no 
less  than  thirty-five  main  divisions,  including  spirits  of 
heaven,  of  stars,  of  earth,  of  mountains  and  hills,  and  of  the 
district;  spirits  of  the  house  site,  of  the  house  itself,  of  the 


RELIGIOUS  BELIEFS  OF  THE  KOREANS  87 

ridge-pole,  of  goods  and  furniture,  and  of  the  kitchen; 
spirits  that  dwell  in  trees,  in  caverns,  in  streams,  and  that 
roam  through  houses  and  about  the  country,  making  trouble 
wherever  they  go;  spirits  that  serve  one's  ancestors,  that 
aid  jugglers  and  exorcists,  that  take  possession  of  young 
girls,  and  that  bring  death  to  women  in  childbirth;  spirits 
that  make  men  brave  and  that  make  them  cowardly; 
spirits  that  convey  smallpox,  cholera,  and  a  long  list  of 
other  diseases;  spirits  that  cause  one  to  die  young,  to  die 
away  from  home,  to  die  as  substitute  for  another,  to  die 
by  strangulation,  by  drowning,  by  suicide,  by  a  fall,  and 
by  being  beaten.  Each  main  subdivision  is  divided  and 
subdivided  and  subdivided  again,  until  count  is  lost 
among  the  legions  and  legions  of  spirits. 

Korean  religious  rites  are  pathetic  efforts  to  propitiate 
or  outwit  these  innumerable  demons.  All  sorts  of  expedi- 
ents are  adopted  by  the  terrified  people.  High  posts,  sur- 
mounted by  grotesquely  carved  heads  with  painted  lips, 
cheeks,  and  eyebrows,  guard  the  approaches  to  a  village. 
Near  the  house  a  stake  is  driven  into  the  ground,  the  ex- 
posed part  wrapped  with  straw  and  tipped  with  a  bit  of 
white  paper,  on  which  words  of  alleged  mystical  power 
have  been  inscribed.  This  stake  propitiates  the  god  of  the 
site,  and  sacrifices  and  offerings  are  made  to  keep  him  in 
good  humor.  The  ridge-poles  of  houses,  public  buildings, 
and  city  gates  are  adorned  with  odd,  misshapen  figures 
which  are  believed  to  be  a  protection  to  the  occupants  and 
the  city.  Hilltops  have  shrines,  small  and  usually  dilapi- 
dated buildings,  containing  images  or  paper  pictures  of 
mythical  beings.  Pain  means  that  a  demon  has  gotten 
into  the  body,  and  the  method  of  treatment  is  an  attempt 
to  kill  it.  A  eunuch  swings  a  burning  torch  to  insure 
abundant  harvests.  A  cracked  nut  held  in  the  mouth  and 
then  spat  out  is  supposed  to  prevent  boils  and  sores.  When 
a  child  is  born,  a  candle  is  lighted;  if  it  does  not  go  out  un- 
til it  is  consumed,  the  child  will  have  a  long  life;  but  if 
the  flame  dies  out  or  is  blown  out  before  the  candle  burns 
down  to  its  socket,  early  death  must  be  anticipated.  The 


88  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

traveller  will  sometimes  find  across  the  path  a  log  with 
several  holes  in  it,  one  of  which  has  been  carefully  plugged. 
This  means  that  a  sorceress  has  succeeded  in  corking  up 
a  demon  which  had  been  causing  sickness.  The  muleteers 
will  step  carefully  over  such  a  log. 

Many  a  time  as  we  travelled  through  the  interior  our 
path  wound  around  a  tree  about  whose  trunk  were  piles 
of  stones  and  from  whose  branches  bits  of  colored  rags 
fluttered.  The  superstitious  people  imagined  that  an  evil 
spirit  inhabited  such  a  tree.  The  spirit  was  believed  to 
be  curious  as  well  as  malignant,  and  in  order  to  divert  his 
attention  the  wayfarer  would  toss  a  stone  about  the  base 
of  the  tree  or  tear  a  strip  from  his  garment  and  fasten  it 
to  a  limb,  and  while  the  curious  demon  was  examining  the 
stone  or  rag,  the  frightened  Korean  would  dodge  past. 

At  the  Korean  New  Year  superstition  runs  riot.  Hair 
that  has  been  cut  off  or  combed  out  during  the  year  is 
burned  in  an  earthen  vessel  to  prevent  demons  from  enter- 
ing the  house  during  the  following  year.  Troubles  are 
metaphorically  placed  in  straw  dolls  and  tossed  into  the 
street  in  the  belief  that  whoever  picks  them  up  will  take 
the  troubles  away  from  the  original  owner.  It  is  not  un- 
common to  see  a  frightened  mother  vigorously  spanking  a 
child  who  has  innocently  picked  up  one  of  these  dolls. 
Bits  of  colored  paper  are  placed  in  split  sticks  on  the  tops 
of  the  houses,  and  the  moon  is  besought  to  take  them  away, 
or  a  statement  of  some  adversity  and  a  painted  image  are 
put  on  paper  and  burned.  Multitudes  of  both  sexes  and 
all  ages  cross  a  bridge  shortly  after  dark  once  for  each  year 
of  their  lives  in  the  conviction  that  this  will  prevent  pains 
in  the  feet  and  legs  throughout  the  new  year. 

The  formidable  personages  in  all  this  religious  life,  if 
indeed  it  may  be  called  a  religious  life,  are  not  the  priests 
but  the  shamans,  or  sorcerers.  They  are  of  two  kinds, 
the  mu-tang  and  the  pan-su.  The  latter  are  blind,  and 
popular  imagination  invests  them  with  extraordinary  gifts. 
Some  sorcerers  are  men,  but  most  of  them  are  women. 
They  are  supposed  to  have  a  supernatural  call  to  their  pro- 


RELIGIOUS  BELIEFS  OF  THE  KOREANS  89 

fession,  and  to  have  magical  power  over  demons.  They 
are  held  in  such  mingled  reverence  and  fear  that  no  one 
thinks  of  associating  familiarly  with  them,  the  people  re- 
garding them  with  something  of  the  terror  with  which  they 
regard  the  demons  whom  the  sorcerers  are  believed  to  ex- 
orcise. And  yet  the  Koreans  feel  that  they  cannot  get 
along  without  them.  They  consult  them  on  all  sorts  of 
occasions,  and  before  beginning  any  kind  of  an  enterprise, 
in  order  to  make  sure  that  the  demons  will  not  interfere. 
On  the  advice  of  mu-tangs,  demon  festivals  are  arranged 
to  keep  the  demons  in  good  humor.  The  mu-tangs  are 
summoned  in  illness  that  they  may  banish  the  demon  that 
is  causing  the  pain  or  fever. 

The  medicine  employed  by  the  mu-tang  or  sorcerer  cer- 
tainly ought  to  accomplish  something.  The  remedy  fre- 
quently employed  for  smallpox  is  a  stew  of  meat  cut  from 
the  body  of  a  yellow  dog,  the  eyebrows  of  a  tiger,  and  dried 
beetles  of  several  species,  it  being  important  that  the 
beetles  were  caught  on  a  dewy  summer  morning.  Witches 
are  exorcised  by  a  broth  made  from  snakes,  lizards,  toads, 
and  powdered  tiger's  teeth.  This  interesting  decoction  is 
also  deemed  a  specific  for  fevers,  and  a  large  bowlful  is  ad- 
ministered at  a  single  dose.  A  medical  missionary  writes: 
"The  horns  of  a  deer  when  only  about  six  inches  long  and 
filled  with  blood  are  highly  esteemed.  Dried  and  pow- 
dered, they  are  prescribed  to  restore  agility  to  the  aged. 
I  priced  some  of  these  horns  at  a  Korean  drug-store,  and 
the  dealer  asked  from  fifty  to  a  hundred  dollars  a  pair. 
In  desperate  cases,  a  mixture  of  snakes,  toads,  and  centi- 
pedes is  carefully  boiled  together  and  warranted  to  kill  or 
cure.  Gall  is  another  favorite  remedy — beefs  gall  for 
digestion,  bear's  gall  for  the  liver,  crow's  gall  for  debility. 
In  the  last  case  there  are  certain  conditions  attendant  upon 
its  use.  Mr.  Kim  Tuck  Yomgi,  my  language-teacher,  ex- 
citedly aroused  me  one  morning  before  daybreak  while  at 
a  mountain  monastery  where  we  were  studying.  'Please 
come  quickly  and  kill  it/  he  shouted.  I  grasped  my  shot- 
gun and  rushed  out  to  behold  him  pointing  at  an  ordinary 


90  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

black  crow  seated  in  a  tree.  'What's  the  matter?  What 
do  you  want  me  to  kill?'  'That  crow/  said  he.  'Quick, 
before  the  sun  gets  up ! '  Astonishment  deprived  me  of 
action  and  the  crow  flew  away.  Whereupon  Mr.  Kim 
sadly  explained  that  a  crow  must  be  killed  before  daybreak 
or  its  gall  would  have  no  medical  virtue." 

The  spirit  of  smallpox  requires  special  handling.  The 
mu-tang  solemnly  advises  that  its  arrival  be  observed  by 
a  cessation  of  labor  on  the  part  of  the  family  and  its  neigh- 
bors, and  the  offering  of  a  ceremonial  feast.  He  then 
directs  that  the  patient  be  respectfully  worshipped  several 
times  a  day  as  the  abode  of  the  dread  spirit.  If  the  disease 
abates,  the  departure  of  the  spirit  is  celebrated  by  another 
feast,  a  prominent  feature  of  which  is  a  small  wooden 
horse  which  is  heavily  loaded  with  supplies  for  the  journey 
of  the  departing  demon.  Sometimes  a  mother  will  make 
a  straw  horse  and  place  it  by  the  door  in  order  that  a  lag- 
gard demon  may  take  the  hint  and  have  a  convenient 
means  of  getting  away.  If  death  occurs,  a  swarm  of  evil 
spirits  attend  the  funeral,  looking  for  a  chance  to  whisk 
away  the  dead.  If  the  family  is  able  to  afford  the  expense 
of  two  or  more  coffins,  they  are  provided  and  buried  in 
different  places,  the  utmost  care  being  observed  to  prevent 
the  demons  finding  out  which  coffin  contains  the  body. 

More  deadly  than  "medicines"  is  the  chim,  the  surgical 
instrument  commonly  used.  There  are  two  kinds,  one  a 
small  knife  and  the  other  a  large  and  rudely  made  iron 
needle.  The  former  is  seldom  used,  the  latter  is  universal. 
The  sorcerer  thrusts  it  into  the  body  to  let  out  or  kill  the 
demon,  which  is  believed  to  cause  the  pain.  As  the  chim 
is  usually  rusty,  and  is  never  properly  cleaned  after  using, 
it  makes  an  infected  punctured  wound  which  not  infre- 
quently develops  into  an  ugly  sore.  I  saw  many  pitiful 
illustrations  of  the  disastrous  consequences  as  I  attended 
the  clinics  in  mission  hospitals,  and  every  medical  mission- 
ary could  tell  a  heart-rending  story  of  the  sufferings,  not 
only  of  men  and  women,  but  of  little  children,  whose  bodies 
have  been  infected  in  this  way. 


RELIGIOUS  BELIEFS  OF  THE  KOREANS  91 

The  whole  life  of  the  Korean  is  grievously  influenced  by 
these  superstitions,  and  by  the  cunning  and  often  hysterical 
sorcerers.  They  are  to  be  found  in  hovel  and  palace  alike. 
Officers  of  exalted  rank  as  well  as  poverty-stricken  peasants 
call  in  blind  sorcerers  to  perform  magical  ceremonies  over  a 
sick  member  of  the  family,  or  to  select  a  lucky  day  for  the 
marriage  of  a  son  or  daughter.  As  our  party  entered  one 
village,  we  heard  the  sound  of  native  drums  and  the  clangor 
of  brass  cymbals.  On  going  to  the  house  we  saw  a  hideous 
old  sorceress  dancing  in  the  midst  of  nervous  relatives, 
alternately  mumbling  and  shrieking  incantations,  while 
attendants  made  racket  enough  to  make  a  well  person  ill, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  poor  sufferers  whose  disease  was  being 
treated.  The  fees  which  these  sorcerers  receive  are  often 
large,  and  in  the  aggregate  they  reach  enormous  propor- 
tions. Within  recent  years  the  more  intelligent  officials  in 
the  cities  have  tried  to  hold  the  worst  of  these  sorcerers  in 
check,  and  the  police  have  sometimes  arrested  them;  but 
superstitions  die  hard.  "  This  is  a  dreadful  state  of  affairs," 
a  Korean  in  Seoul  was  overheard  saying  to  a  friend.  "  My 
brother  is  very  sick,  and  although  I  have  tried  to  get  a 
mu-tang,  no  one  will  come  for  fear  of  being  arrested  and 
punished;  so  I  suppose  there  is  nothing  for  it  but  to  let  the 
poor  fellow  die." 

No  right-minded  person  will  ridicule  such  superstition. 
Rather  will  he  be  deeply  moved  by  its  pathos,  and  often 
by  its  tragedy.  After  an  epidemic  of  cholera  in  Seoul, 
Mrs.  Underwood  wrote:  "Koreans  call  the  cholera  'the 
rat  disease/  believing  that  cramps  are  rats  gnawing  and 
crawling  inside  the  legs,  going  up  till  the  heart  is  reached; 
so  that  they  offer  prayers  to  the  spirit  of  the  cat,  hang  a 
paper  cat  on  the  house-door  and  rub  their  cramps  with  a 
cat's  skin.  They  offered  prayers  and  sacrifices  in  various 
high  places  to  the  heavens,  and  some  of  the  streets  in  in- 
fected districts  were  almost  impassable  on  account  of  ropes 
stretched  across,  about  five  feet  high,  at  intervals  of  about 
every  twenty-five  feet,  to  which  paper  prayers  were  attached. 
As  my  coolies,  trying  to  pass  along  with  my  chair,  broke 


92  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

one  of  these,  I  could  not  help  admonishing  the  owner  who 
came  to  its  rescue:  'Better  put  them  up  a  little  higher/ 
Ay,  put  them  up  higher,  poor  Korean  brother,  they  are 
far  too  near  the  earth !  One  of  the  most  pathetic  sights 
in  connection  with  this  plague  were  these  poor,  wind-torn, 
bedraggled  paper  prayers,  hanging  helplessly  everywhere, 
the  offering  of  blind  superstition  to  useless  dumb  gods  who 
can  neither  pity  nor  hear."  They1 

"  — stretch  lame  hands  of  faith,  and  grope, 
And  gather  dust  and  chaff." 

1  Fifteen  Years  Among  the  Top-Knots,  pp.  139-140. 


CHAPTER  VI 
A  RAMBLE  IN  THE  INTERIOR 

KOREA  is  changing  rapidly  under  the  new  conditions  of 
recent  years,  and  railways  now  make  travelling  as  easy 
as  it  is  unromantic.  I  shall  always  be  glad  that  I  enjoyed 
a  rambling  journey  through  some  of  the  provinces  in  the 
quaint  old  style  of  former  days.  It  was  during  my  first 
visit  in  the  beautiful  spring  weeks  of  1901.  My  party  con- 
sisted of  my  wife  and  two  experienced  missionaries,  0.  R. 
Avison,  M.D.,  and  the  Reverend  C.  E.  Sharp,  who  proved 
to  be  not  only  indispensable  guides  and  interpreters  but 
delightfully  congenial  companions. 

Before  starting  from  Seoul  we  obtained  a  travelling  pass- 
port called  the  kwan-ja,  which  called  on  all  magistrates 
to  whom  it  might  be  presented  to  furnish  whatever  we  re- 
quired in  the  way  of  food,  lodging,  money,  animals,  and 
carriers.  We  did  not  use  it,  however.  Local  magistrates 
do  not  take  kindly  to  such  passports.  Some  travellers  had 
abused  their  privileges  under  them,  and  when  magistrates 
had  found  it  impracticable  to  comply  with  their  peremp- 
tory demands,  the  travellers  had  become  insolent  and  threat- 
ening. A  magistrate,  even  though  weak  and  corrupt,  is  a 
human  being  with  some  rights,  and  he  cannot  always  place 
himself  at  the  disposal  of  a  wandering  foreigner.  In  the 
rice-planting  or  harvesting  season,  when  every  able-bodied 
man  is  toiling  in  the  fields,  it  is  intolerable  to  have  a  white 
man  come  along  and  present  a  government  order  for  car- 
riers. The  magistrates  had  learned,  too,  that  money  ad- 
vanced to  travellers  on  a  kwan-ja  was  not  always  repaid. 
The  traveller  might  honestly  pay  the  amount  on  his  return 
to  Seoul,  but  the  official  who  received  it  might  pocket  it. 
The  unhappy  magistrate  did  not  dare  to  make  remon- 

93 


94  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

strance,  and  he  knew  that  if  he  did  he  would  get  no  redress. 
The  sensible,  kindly  traveller  who  makes  reasonable  re- 
quests, pays  fair  prices  and  deals  through  an  honest  inter- 
preter, will  have  little  difficulty  in  procuring  anything  he 
really  needs  that  the  people  can  supply. 

Proceeding  by  rail  to  Chemulpo,  we  there  took  a  tiny 
twenty-five  ton  steamer,  which  bore  us  over  smooth  waters 
among  the  many  islands  dotting  this  lovely  coast  to  Hai 
Ju.  We  passed  dozens  of  lazily  moving  junks  crowded 
with  Koreans  who  were  contentedly  chatting  and  smoking. 
A  Korean  junk  is  not  a  graceful  object.  It  is  clumsily  con- 
structed of  heavy,  irregularly  sawed  planks,  and  is  so  poorly 
put  together  that  it  appears  like  tempting  Providence  to 
trust  oneself  to  such  a  craft.  The  sails  are  wretchedly 
made  of  coarse  matting.  A  junk  does  fairly  well  working 
up  a  river  when  time  is  no  object,  as  it  seldom  is  to  Koreans, 
and  it  will  behave  with  tolerable  decency  on  the  open  sea 
when  it  is  running  before  the  wind.  But  the  foreigner 
who  confides  himself  to  a  Korean  junk  when  his  route  does 
not  lie  in  the  direction  of  the  wind,  and  when  the  sea  is 
heavy,  should  be  well  equipped  with  life  preservers  and 
accident  insurance  policies,  although  accidents  are  really 
less  common  than  one  would  imagine  from  the  dilapidated 
appearance  of  these  crazy  boats.  I  saw  junks  that  ap- 
peared to  be  so  old  and  rotten  that  they  were  about  to 
fall  to  pieces,  but  which  somehow  managed  to  wabble 
along  without  sinking. 

The  trip  from  Chemulpo  was  supposed  to  occupy  twelve 
hours,  but  as  we  sat  on  the  upper  deck  in  the  early  evening, 
enjoying  the  soft  glories  of  sunset  on  land  and  sea,  and  the 
still  softer  beauties  of  the  full  moonlight  which  ere  long 
flooded  the  scene,  we  learned  that  we  could  not  reach  our 
destination  till  midnight.  As  Hai  Ju,  where  we  intended 
to  spend  the  night,  was  three  and  a  half  miles  from  the 
landing-place,  we  decided  to  remain  on  board  till  morning. 
The  tiny  cabin  was  filled  with  Koreans  eating  rice  and 
drinking  sake;  but  they  left  after  a  while,  and  we  stacked 
the  table  and  chairs  across  the  middle  of  the  room,  Doctor 


A  RAMBLE  IN  THE  INTERIOR  95 

Avison  and  Mr.  Sharp  taking  one  of  the  improvised  com- 
partments and  Mrs.  Brown  and  I  the  other,  a  sharp  bump 
on  the  head  emphasizing  the  fact  that  the  ceiling  was  only 
five  feet  from  the  floor.  The  cabin  was  only  wide  enough 
for  three,  and  a  Japanese  policeman  was  already  asleep  on 
our  side.  But  we  rolled  ourselves  up  in  our  rugs  and  lay 
down  on  the  floor.  Though  the  accommodations  were 
somewhat  inferior  to  those  on  an  Atlantic  liner,  we  slept 
soundly  till  half-past  five  the  next  morning,  when  we  were 
roused  by  a  boy  standing  beside  our  open  window  and 
bawling  to  some  one  on  shore.  As  we  were  already  dressed, 
we  were  soon  on  deck. 

What  a  glorious  morning  it  was !  The  air  was  deliciously 
cool  and  bracing.  The  water  flashed  in  the  bright  sunlight 
and  the  shore  view  was  superb — a  green  valley,  a  fine  hill 
beyond  it  and  hi  the  farther  background  noble  mountains. 
After  a  hurried  breakfast  from  our  stores,  we  went  ashore 
in  the  inevitable  sampan,  and  after  the  necessary  dickering 
for  bullocks  to  carry  our  luggage,  started  for  Hai  Ju.  That 
three-and-a-half-mile  walk  I  shall  never  forget.  The  scenery 
was  beautiful  beyond  description.  Up  and  down  high  hills 
we  went,  the  views  commanding  wide  sweeps  of  ocean  and 
bay,  of  carefully  tilled  fields,  blossoming  fruit-trees,  and 
thatched  farmhouses,  which,  in  such  environment,  looked 
far  more  attractive  than  they  really  were.  Just  before 
reaching  the  city,  we  topped  a  crest  from  which  we  looked 
upon  the  lovely  valley  in  which  lies  the  walled  city  of  Hai 
Ju,  a  considerable  place  of  about  10,000  inhabitants.  The 
houses  were  the  typical  low,  thatched-roofed  huts  of  the 
Koreans,  but  the  wall  appeared  massive  and  its  gates  rose 
impressively  above  it. 

There  were  at  that  time  no  resident  white  men  in  Hai 
Ju,  and  the  arrival  of  our  party  was  therefore  quite  an 
event.  The  people  pressed  about  us  in  great  crowds. 
They  knew  Doctor  Avison  as  the  wonderful  foreign  doctor 
from  Seoul,  and  they  came  to  him  with  all  their  sick  and 
injured.  Many  of  the  cases  were  pathetic  in  the  extreme. 
Doctor  Avison  handled  each  one  with  sympathy  as  well  as 


96  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

with  skill,  and  he  spoke  to  each  one  about  the  Good  Physi- 
cian in  whose  name  he  had  come. 

In  the  evening  I  was  called  upon  to  address  the  people 
through  an  interpreter.  I  sympathized  with  the  late  Doctor 
Maltbie  D.  Babcock,  who  said  that  an  interpreter  is  an 
"interrupter,"  and  that  the  result  is  "a  compound  dis- 
location of  ideas  with  mortification  immediately  setting  in." 
I  had  never  realized  before  how  much  of  the  effect  of  public 
speech  is  dependent  upon  a  continuous  flow  of  language 
and  gradually  increasing  momentum.  If  the  Koreans  did 
not  understand,  or  if  they  deemed  the  address  uninteresting, 
they  were  too  uncivilized  to  be  rude  or  restless,  for  they 
sat  quietly  and  listened  intently  and  with  the  utmost 
courtesy.  It  was  a  striking  scene  from  the  porch  of  the 
little  building,  with  the  people  sitting  and  standing  all 
about  and  the  flickering  flame  of  a  chimneyless  kerosene- 
lamp  lighting  the  up-turned  faces. 

The  problem  of  conveyance  was  a  serious  one,  for  at 
that  time  the  Japanese  had  not  constructed  the  roads 
which  may  now  be  found,  and  we  had  to  follow  mere  paths, 
often  worn  into  deep  ruts  by  the  passage  of  many  feet  and 
hoofs.  In  wet  weather  these  ruts  were  full  of  sticky  mud, 
and  in  dry  weather  they  were  usually  half  filled  with  a 
powdery  dust  that  was  very  trying.  Bridges  were  few  and 
were  ordinarily  of  poles  covered  with  dirt.  The  chances 
were  about  even  that  our  pony's  or  bullock's  foot  would 
sink  through  the  dirt,  and  that  the  supporting  poles  were 
half  rotten.  After  I  had  crashed  through  one  of  these  pre- 
carious bridges  and  had  sprawled  down  in  a  heap  amid  a 
shower  of  earth,  stones,  broken  timbers,  and  the  heels  of 
the  pony  I  was  riding,  I  made  it  a  rule  to  avoid  bridges, 
unless  certain  of  their  strength,  and  to  ford  the  brooks  and 
gullies. 

The  chair  is  the  most  comfortable  conveyance  on  a 
country  trip  in  Korea,  and  we  had  brought  two  with  us. 
Each  chair  is  suspended  between  two  long  poles  and  is  car- 
ried on  such  long  tours  by  four  men,  although  two  are 
sometimes  used  for  short  rides  on  the  level  streets  of  cities. 


A  RAMBLE  IN  THE  INTERIOR  97 

The  chair  coolies  received  three  hundred  and  seventy-five 
cash  (about  six  cents)  for  every  ten  li  (three  and  a  third 
miles),  and  bought  their  own  food,  unless  our  stay  at  any 
particular  place  was  prolonged. 

We  had  two  chairs,  and  our  plan  was  to  hire  two  ponies, 
using  oxen  to  transport  our  luggage  and  supplies.  On  ar- 
riving at  Hai  Ju  the  negotiations  were  begun.  The  owners 
demanded  seven  hundred  cash  (about  ten  cents)  for  every 
ten  li  for  each  ox,  six  hundred  cash  for  each  pony,  and  in 
addition  rice  for  two  meals  a  day  for  the  animals  and  their 
drivers,  for  in  Korea  a  man  goes  with  each  animal.  The 
price  appeared  very  low  to  an  American,  but  for  Korea  it 
was  exorbitant  and  my  companions  did  their  utmost  to 
secure  a  reduction.  But  the  Oriental  loves  to  dicker.  He 
was  not  in  a  hurry  and  he  knew  that  we  were.  Moreover, 
at  that  season  he  needed  his  oxen  for  work  in  the  fields. 
Late  at  night  a  bargain  was  concluded  for  two  ponies  and 
four  oxen  at  about  the  terms  imposed.  That  settled,  we 
went  to  sleep,  and  early  the  next  morning  we  were  astir 
for  a  seven-o'clock  start.  But  we  were  again  reminded 
that  we  were  in  Asia  by  the  appearance  of  only  one  pony 
and  two  oxen.  The  men  solemnly  declared  that  there  was 
not  another  animal  in  town,  although  the  night  before 
they  had  assured  us  that  they  had  all  we  wanted.  We 
could  not  spend  another  day  haggling,  so  we  extemporized 
another  chair,  hired  men  to  carry  it,  piled  the  most  neces- 
sary supplies  on  the  two  oxen  and  started,  leaving  Doctor 
Avison's  medicine-boy  and  Mr.  Sharp's  helper  to  find  other 
oxen  and  follow  when  they  could.  They  were  successful 
and  joined  us  later  in  the  day. 

Although  we  were  only  four  foreigners  and  travelled  as 
lightly  as  possible,  yet  our  cavalcade  was  considerable. 
We  had  four  bullocks,  one  pony,  and  three  chairs.  As  each 
bullock  and  the  pony  had  a  separate  man  and  each  chair 
had  four  bearers,  and  we  had  a  Korean  cook,  the  Christian 
helper  for  this  field,  and  Doctor  Avison's  hospital  assistant, 
we  made  up  a  party  of  twenty-four  persons  and  five  animals. 

The  Korean  pony  is  not  an  attractive  beast  either  in  size 


98  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

or  disposition.  There  were  no  foreign  saddles,  and  it  was 
customary  to  pile  one's  bedding  on  top  of  the  little  animal 
and  then  to  climb  on  top  and  let  the  feet  dangle  about  the 
pony's  neck.  It  is  not  a  comfortable  position,  and  as  it  is 
impossible  to  hold  on  to  anything,  and  as  the  typical  pony 
is  restless  and  vicious,  the  possibilities  of  disaster  are 
numerous.  The  ponies  that  are  available  for  this  purpose 
are  nearly  all  stallions,  and,  though  they  are  not  large, 
they  are  tough  and  have  remarkable  powers  of  endurance. 
Their  savagery  is  a  proverb.  They  are  willing  to  fight 
everything  and  everybody  at  all  times  and  places.  No 
matter  how  heavily  they  may  be  loaded  or  how  tired  they 
are  supposed  to  be  after  a  day's  journey,  they  will  attack 
one  another  with  the  furious  glee  of  an  Irishman  at  a  Donny- 
brook  Fair.  Even  after  the  most  toilsome  journey,  it  is 
ordinarily  necessary  to  chain  them  to  their  troughs  while 
they  are  feeding,  while  at  night  they  are  fastened  by  ropes 
hung  from  the  rafters  of  the  inn  and  passing  under  them 
in  suchfa  way  that  they  are  partially  suspended.  Whether 
this  is  simply  a  custom,  or  to  keep  them  from  fighting,  or 
to  prevent  them  from  lying  down  it  would  be  difficult  to 
say,  though  probably  all  three  reasons  enter,  for  Koreans 
have  an  idea  that  a  pony  must  never  be  allowed  to  lie 
down.  They  also  insist  that  he  must  not  be  permitted  to 
drink  water  when  it  can  possibly  be  avoided,  his  food  con- 
sisting of  chopped  millet-stalks,  rice-husks,  bran,  and  beans, 
all  boiled  together  and  served  hot  as  a  thin  gruel.  While 
the  Korean  pony  is  not  to  be  made  a  friend  of,  he  may  be 
implicitly  trusted  in  the  most  uncertain  places.  He  will 
work  like  a  Trojan  and  keep  his  footing  on  the  edge  of 
precipices  which  make  the  foreigner  shiver.  Mine  proved 
perfectly  reliable  in  these  respects,  save,  of  course,  when  a 
bridge  gave  way  under  him,  and  then  his  rage  soothed  me, 
for  he  gave  expression  to  our  common  feelings. 
f  The  days  of  that  interior  trip  were  revelations  that  con- 
vinced us  how  much  is  missed  by  the  traveller  who  visits 
only  the  cities.  All  the  way  the  scenery  was  alternately 
beautiful  and  sublime.  The  valleys  were  cultivated  fields 


A  RAMBLE  IN  THE  INTERIOR  99 

dotted  with  farmhouses,  adorned  with  blossoming  fruit- 
trees,  and  surrounded  by  noble  hills.  From  a  crest  over 
which  our  path  wound,  we  commanded  on  one  side  a  wide 
panorama  of  ocean  and  inlets,  green  islands,  and  bold  prom- 
ontories, and  on  the  other  side  hills  and  dales  and  meadows 
and  majestic  ranges  piled  high  against  the  blue  sky. 

We  passed  many  quaint  little  villages  nestling  in  the 
nooks  of  the  hills.  Here,  as  in  China,  it  is  customary  for 
farmers  to  segregate  themselves  into  hamlets,  going  to  their 
fields  each  morning  and  returning  in  the  evening.  This  is 
not  so  exclusively  the  rule  as  in  China  so  that  here  and 
there  we  saw  an  isolated  farmhouse,  but  such  houses  were 
not  common. 

We  stopped  for  tiffin  at  the  village  of  Kerumajai,  the 
whole  population  curiously  watching  us  as  we  ate.  Mrs. 
Brown,  as  usual,  was  the  cynosure  of  all  eyes.  The  people 
had  occasionally  seen  a  foreign  man,  but  a  white  woman 
was  rare  and  aroused  as  much  excitement  as  a  circus  in 
a  Western  American  town.  The  Korean  women  thronged 
about  her,  feeling  of  her  shoes  and  dress,  trying  on  her  hat, 
asking  her  to  undo  her  hair,  endeavoring  to  take  off  her 
wedding-ring,  and  rubbing  her  cheek  to  see  whether  her 
white  complexion  would  come  off,  all  the  while  excitedly 
jabbering  and  laughing  at  so  strange  an  object  as  an  Ameri- 
can woman.  But  they  were  always  good-natured,  and 
Mrs.  Brown  took  their  attentions  with  like  good  nature, 
though  there  must  have  been  times  when  such  personal 
liberties  were  rather  irksome.  Privacy  was  impossible, 
and  she  was  obliged  not  only  to  eat  but  to  retire  at  night 
and  dress  in  the  morning  with  the  inquisitive  eyes  of  Ko- 
rean women  at  every  chink.  If  there  was  none,  the  oiled 
paper  on  the  windows  was  broken  and  the  space  quickly 
filled  with  the  tousled  heads  of  the  curious.  This,  of  course, 
was  the  experience  of  every  woman  missionary  who  went 
among  the  villages.  After  days  and  nights  of  such  experi-* 
ences,  it  was  a  relief  to  enter  a  missionary  home  or  a  village 
where  the  Christians  were  numerous  enough  to  secure  pri- 
vacy for  the  visitor. 


100  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

Evening  found  us  at  a  typical  inn  in  the  village  of  Tanai. 
It  was  a  low  building  of  poles,  with  mud  walls  and  thatched 
roof  and  enclosing  a  square  courtyard  crowded  with  dogs, 
people,  and  the  effects  of  the  native  travellers  who  had 
already  arrived.  One  side  was  occupied  by  feeding  cattle. 
Another  was  devoted  to  large  earthenware  pots,  in  which 
rice  was  being  cooked.  The  remaining  sides  were  small 
rooms  with  paper-covered  openings  for  windows,  and  earth 
floors,  beneath  which  ran  the  flues  from  the  kitchen-fires. 
There  being  no  chairs,  we  squatted,  Korean  fashion,  on 
some  matting,  which  slowly  became  so  warm  that  we  felt 
as  if  we  were  sitting  on  a  stove.  We  had  travelled  faster 
than  our  bullocks  so  that  we  had  no  supplies,  but  we  suc- 
ceeded in  buying  some  food  from  the  natives  and  we  watched 
our  cook  prepare  it  over  a  few  sticks  of  charcoal  in  a  pot 
of  ashes.  A  good  supper  it  was,  too,  and  we  ate  it  before 
a  wondering  audience  of  natives,  who  were  not  in  the  least 
embarrassed  because  their  faces  and  clothing  did  not  ap- 
pear to  have  been  washed  for  a  decade.  We  enjoyed  our 
meal  as  only  hungry  travellers  can  enjoy  food,  and  then, 
spreading  our  blankets  on  our  cots,  we  slept  so  soundly  that 
the  swarming  vermin  had  an  undisturbed  repast.  In  Asia 
it  is  just  as  well  to  submit  calmly  to  the  inevitable. 

The  next  day  we  journeyed  through  another  beautiful 
region  to  Kum  Dong,  where  we  were  welcomed  by  Kim 
Yun  0,  a  notable  man  in  the  community,  and  surrounded 
by  relatives  and  dependents  like  an  Old  Testament  patriarch. 
He  is  a  Christian,  and  so  devoted  that  he  had  succeeded 
in  leading  to  Christ  no  less  than  twenty  of  his  family  and 
neighbors.  He  quickly  installed  us  in  a  literal  prophet's 
chamber,  built  on  the  end  of  his  house  expressly  for  the 
comfort  of  visiting  missionaries,  and  soon  he  had  gathered 
a  great  company  of  his  neighbors  and  friends  to  hear  an 
address. 

Our  pony  man  now  refused  to  go  farther,  and  as  no  other 
pony  was  to  be  had,  Avison,  Sharp,  and  I  took  turns  in  walk- 
ing. We  dismissed  our  four  men  and  piled  our  impedi- 
menta on  a  clumsy  but  strong  two-wheeled  cart,  drawn  by 


A  RAMBLE  IN  THE  INTERIOR  101 

an  ox.  But  rain  turned  what  was  supposed  to  be  a  road 
into  ruts  of  mud,  and  so  Saturday  noon  found  us  at  Sung- 
kokai,  miles  ahead  of  our  plodding  oxen.  There  were  only 
three  families  in  this  hamlet,  and  they  evidently  had  fared 
badly  at  the  hands  of  some  former  traveller,  for  in  reply 
to  our  inquiries  they  solemnly  asserted  that  they  had  no 
fowls,  no  eggs,  no  anything  but  rice.  While  this  was  being 
cooked,  I  strolled  into  "the  suburbs"  where  I  found  chickens 
in  abundance.  Meanwhile  Avison  prowled  around  a  back 
yard  and  found  some  clams  (we  were  only  a  mile  from  the 
sea).  More  foraging  by  other  members  of  the  party  de- 
veloped eight  eggs  and  a  bowl  of  wild  honey.  Sharp  pro- 
duced a  corruption  fund  whose  hundreds  of  "cash"  sounded 
big  to  the  natives,  although  they  only  meant  a  few  cents  to 
us;  and  soon  we  were  seated  cross-legged  on  an  earthen  floor, 
feasting  on  a  four-course  dinner  consisting  of  rice  and  clam- 
broth,  rice  and  eggs,  rice  and  chicken,  and  rice  and  honey. 
Eight  miles  farther  we  saw  a  group  of  white  figures  await- 
ing us  on  the  top  of  a  hill.  It  was  a  delegation  from  Sorai 
to  bid  us  welcome  to  the  village  whose  remarkable  story  is 
narrated  in  a  later  chapter.  We  were  domiciled  in  two  of 
the  classrooms  of  the  church.  It  is  a  notable  building  for 
Korea,  and  almost  imposing  in  comparison  with  the  hum- 
ble homes  about  it,  standing  on  an  eminence  commanding 
a  wide  view,  and  on  the  edge  of  a  grove  which  was  once 
the  centre  of  pagan  worship.  It  was  dedicated  in  June, 
1896,  and  was  the  first  church  in  Korea  built  wholly  by 
Koreans.  One  of  the  elders,  Suk  (or  Sau)  Kyung  Jo,  had 
gone  to  Seoul  on  purpose  to  escort  us  to  Sorai,  but  through 
a  misunderstanding  as  to  the  time  of  our  departure,  he  ar- 
rived there  after  we  had  started.  Disappointed  but  not 
dismayed,  he  took  the  next  train  to  Chemulpo,  travelled  a 
day  and  a  night  in  a  small  sampan  over  the  route  we  had 
come  by  steamer,  and  then,  without  stopping  to  rest,  he 
had  walked  thirty-five  miles  till  he  overtook  us,  footsore 
and  weary,  but  happy  in  finding  us.  When  I  recalled  the 
roughness  of  the  road  and  observed  that  he  had  passed 
middle  life,  I  marvelled  again. 


102  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

An  unmarked  mound  back  of  the  church  reminds  one  of 
the  tragedy  of  Sorai.  Years  before,  some  devoted  Canadian 
Christians  had  conceived  the  idea  of  an  independent  mission 
work  in  which  a  solitary  missionary  should  live  "as  the 
natives  do."  Three  men  thus  lived  in  a  small  native  house 
in  Sorai  at  various  times.  The  experiment  proved  to  be  a 
disastrous  failure.  Two  of  the  men  soon  saw  the  futility 
of  the  method  and  left  for  other  work.  The  third,  Mr. 
W.  J.  Mackenzie,  had  a  sorrowful  experience.  He  was  a 
consecrated,  indefatigable  missionary,  and  so  persuasively 
commanding  that  he  not  only  prevented  a  robber-band 
from  attacking  Sorai  but  actually  converted  the  chieftain. 
In  the  delirium  of  a  high  fever  he  shot  himself  in  June, 
1895.  The  poor  people  mourned  as  for  a  brother  and 
buried  him  among  their  own  dead.  The  grave  has  no 
mark.  Every  Korean  for  miles  around  knows  it  and  it 
no  more  needs  a  sign  than  the  mountain  which  silently 
looks  down  upon  it. 

After  a  Sunday  in  Sorai  with  three  services,  each  attended 
by  the  whole  village,  we  journeyed  Monday  morning  over 
an  undulating  grassy  prairie  to  a  narrow  valley  which  led 
us  deeply  into  the  famous  Pul  Tai  San  or  Great  Mountains 
of  Buddha.  Soon  we  had  to  dismount  and  begin  a  steep 
climb  over  the  Tai  Kyung  Kol  Pass,  which  means  "the 
Valley  of  Great  Sights."  It  is  a  fitting  name.  Seldom 
have  I  seen  nobler  scenery.  Mighty  must  have  been  the 
elemental  forces  which  once  convulsed  this  region,  up- 
heaving those  stupendous  masses  of  rock  to  dizzy  heights, 
the  strata  often  standing  perpendicularly  in  mute  witness 
to  the  omnipotence  of  the  power  which  had  hurled  them 
upward.  And  yet  amid  all  this  sublimity  we  found  a  flora 
so  abundant  that  in  a  few  hours  Mrs.  Brown  collected  speci- 
mens of  no  less  than  sixty  varieties  of  flowers,  many  of  them 
delicately  beautiful,  though  only  two  were  fragrant.  On 
the  summit  of  the  pass  we  had  a  view  which  brought  to 
mind  the  reverent  lines  of  Wordsworth: 

"  Were  there  below  a  spot  of  holy  ground, 
Where  from  distress  a  refuge  might  be  found, 


A  RAMBLE  IN  THE  INTERIOR  103 

And  solitude  prepare  the  soul  for  heaven; 
Sure  Nature's  God  to  man  that  spot  had  given 
Where  falls  the  purple  morning  far  and  wide 
In  flakes  of  light  upon  the  mountainside; 
Where  with  loud  voice  the  power  of  water  shakes 
The  leafy  wood,  or  sleeps  in  quiet  lakes." 

Emerging  from  the  mountains  into  a  broad,  cultivated 
valley,  we  stopped  for  a  late  tiffin  at  Wu  Dong.  We  did 
not  need  to  be  told  that  there  were  Christians  here,  for  as 
usual  we  had  been  met  several  miles  out  by  smiling  people, 
and  as  we  drew  near,  we  saw  the  tall  pole  with  its  fluttering 
flag — the  happy  custom  of  the  Korean  churches,  so  that 
every  one  knows  where  the  "Jesus  Church"  is.  Seated  on 
the  floor,  native  fashion,  we  enjoyed  the  rice,  eggs,  and 
chicken  which  the  hospitable  villagers  provided,  and  for 
which  they  refused  to  accept  any  compensation.  Then  we 
held  a  short  service,  the  audience  filling  the  little  church 
and  every  outside  space  within  hearing. 

Evening  found  us  at  the  walled  town  of  Chang  Yun.  A 
Christian  family  kindly  welcomed  us,  and  soon  our  arrival 
was  known  among  the  2,000  people  of  the  place.  Presently 
the  curious  crowd  silently  parted  and  a  boy  of  about  twelve 
years  of  age  hobbled  in  on  one  foot  and  crouched  at  Doctor 
Avison's  feet.  The  doctor  was  tired  after  a  hard  day's 
travel,  but  his  kind  heart  could  not  resist  that  mute  appeal. 
But,  alas!  the  trouble  was  a  dislocated  hip  of  such  long  stand- 
ing that  the  limb  had  grown  solidly  in  its  unnatural  posi- 
tion and  could  only  be  remedied  by  surgical  treatment  so 
heroic  as  to  be  quite  out  of  the  question  with  a  pocket-case 
of  instruments  and  in  a  few  hours'  stay.  So  he  could  only 
speak  sympathetically  to  the  boy  and  promise  treatment 
if  his  father  could  bring  him  to  the  mission  hospital  in 
Seoul.  "He  has  had  sores  there,  hasn't  he?"  I  asked  as  I 
pointed  to  the  many  scars  on  the  deformed  hip.  "No," 
said  the  doctor,  "those  are  places  where  the  Korean  doc- 
tors have  thrust  in  needles  to  kill  the  devil  that  is  supposed 
to  cause  the  pain!"  My  heart  was  heavy  for  the  poor 
little  fellow  as  he  limped  away,  for  he  had  a  good 


104  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

face,  pitiful  now  in  its  expression  of  disappointment  and 
agony. 

No  sooner  had  he  gone  than  another  boy  of  about  the 
same  age  showed  a  stiff  arm.  Rolling  up  the  sleeve,  Doctor 
Avison  found  a  dislocated  elbow.  The  accident  had  hap- 
pened eight  months  before,  and  in  this  case  also  a  new 
adhesion  had  formed.  However  the  difficulty  admitted  of 
speedier  treatment,  and  so  then  and  there  the  boy  was 
given  an  anaesthetic  and  the  useless  arm  was  pulled  and 
bent  into  the  proper  shape.  How  bravely  and  trustfully 
the  boy  looked  into  the  face  of  the  physician  who,  he  knew, 
was  about  to  hurt  him !  But  the  doctor  is  a  true  missionary 
physician.  I  have  seen  him  take  frightened,  dirty,  vermin- 
infested  children  in  his  arms,  soothe  and  pet  them  into 
quietness,  and  then  tenderly  examine  and  treat  some  sore 
so  hideous  as  to  make  one  shudder. 

As  we  were  about  to  eat  our  supper  a  middle-aged  man 
staggered  in.  His  once  white  raiment  had  evidently  never 
been  pounded  by  the  clubs  with  which  Korean  women  be- 
labor clothing  in  washing  it,  and  his  skin  was  caked  with 
the  accumulations  of  years  of  filthy  habits.  Untying  a  rag 
about  his  foot,  he  exhibited  a  frightful  ulcer.  Inquiry  de- 
veloped the  fact  that  a  blister  had  once  formed  on  his  ankle 
and  that  by  the  advice  of  the  native  doctor  he  had  smeared 
it  with  oil  and  set  it  on  fire  in  order  to  burn  out  the  imag- 
inary demon.  Dirt,  neglect,  and  flies  had  aggravated  the 
resultant  sore  until  the  bones  were  literally  rotting  away. 
It  was  plainly  a  hospital  case,  and  he  was  therefore  advised 
to  go  to  Seoul  after  the  doctor's  return.  "How  can  I 
travel  one  hundred  and  seventy  miles  to  Seoul  with  no 
money  and  such  a  foot?"  plaintively  queried  the  sufferer. 
True,  but  how  could  the  necessary  operation  be  performed 
amid  the  septic  conditions  of  a  Korean  hut  and  with  the 
few  instruments  the  doctor  had  brought  along  ?  Moreover, 
we  had  to  attend  a  meeting  that  evening,  and  to  start  on 
our  journey  early  the  next  morning.  So  the  man  went 
away  sorrowful.  But  his  pitiable  state  haunted  us.  Would 
it  not  be  better  to  risk  an  operation  here  with  what  was  at 


A  RAMBLE  IN  THE  INTERIOR  105 

hand  than  to  leave  the  man  to  rot  ?  At  eleven  o'clock  that 
night  it  was  so  decided.  The  man  was  hunted  up  and  told 
that  if  he  would  come  at  four  o'clock  the  next  morning,  the 
doctor  would  do  what  he  could  for  him.  He  gladly  came. 
There  are  no  tables  in  these  native  houses  and  so  the  pa- 
tient was  laid  on  the  floor.  The  scanty  supply  of  ether 
would  keep  him  unconscious  only  a  few  minutes,  and  in 
such  primitive  surroundings  and  with  the  dim  light  of  a 
cloudy  morning  struggling  through  the  open  door,  the 
doctor  hastily  washed  and  cut  and  scraped  and  cleaned 
the  foulest  foot  I  ever  saw.  Leaving  careful  directions  for 
daily  dressing  with  a  young  man  who  had  formerly  assisted 
him  in  the  Seoul  hospital,  we  wended  our  way  onward, 
hoping  that  in  spite  of  the  rude  conditions  a  man's  life  had 
been  saved. 

These  are  among  the  common  experiences  of  a  medical 
missionary's  life.  He  has  a  hospital  at  his  city  station, 
but  whenever  he  goes  to  the  country  villages  the  old  pitiable 
conditions  must  be  faced. 

That  entire  trip  through  the  villages  of  Korea  was  a 
revelation  to  us.  We  journeyed  by  so  circuitous  a  path,  in 
order  to  see  as  many  of  the  outstations  as  possible,  that  we 
covered  about  three  hundred  miles.  Everywhere  the  Chris- 
tians were  hospitable  and  affectionate,  and  in  several  places 
the  evidences  of  the  Gospel's  transforming  power  were 
wonderful.  In  Eul  Yul,  for  example,  a  town  of  4,000  in- 
habitants, there  were  no  Christians  three  years  before  our 
visit.  Then  one  of  its  prominent  men  went  to  Seoul  to 
buy  a  public  office.  He  met  Doctor  Underwood,  was  con- 
verted, put  his  money  into  Bibles  and  tracts  instead  of  a 
bribe  for  an  office,  returned  and  distributed  them  among 
his  fellow  townsmen.  They  responded  at  once,  and  we 
found  more  than  a  hundred  baptized  Christians  in  Eul 
Yul,  and  a  considerable  number  of  catechumens.  They 
had  built,  unaided,  a  neat  little  church,  donated  half  the 
cost  of  the  native  house  set  apart  for  the  use  of  the  visiting 
missionary,  and  were  paying  all  their  congregational  ex- 
penses. 


106  THE  MASTERY  OP  THE  FAR  EAST 

As  this  was  the  last  outstation  of  the  Seoul  field;  our 
travelling  companions,  Doctor  Avison  and  Mr.  Sharp,  left 
us  here  and  we  were  taken  in  charge  by  Mr.  Hunt  and 
Doctor  Wells  of  Pyongyang,  who  with  equal  kindness  and 
skill  led  us  through  many  other  villages,  each  with  its  own 
story  of  human  interest.  Over  more  hills  and  through 
more  valleys  we  travelled,  crossing  an  inlet  of  the  sea  with 
wide,  steep  mud  banks  through  which  coolies  carried  us  on 
their  backs,  carefully  picking  our  way  across  innumerable 
flooded  rice-fields  where  the  path  wound  along  the  narrow 
slippery  tops  of  the  dividing  embankments,  till  we  reached 
Whang  Ju,  where  for  the  first  time  we  struck  the  main  road 
between  Seoul  and  Pyongyang.  Near  the  gate  of  this 
walled  city  of  5,000  souls,  we  passed  a  sorcerer  with  two 
assistants  beating  a  drum,  clanging  cymbals,  and  shaking 
strings  of  bells — a  hideous  din,  the  object  of  which  was  to 
frighten  away  an  evil  spirit  from  a  little  child  who  was  ill. 

Saturday  was  cold  and  windy  and  we  travelled  a  hun- 
dred li  to  Pyongyang  in  a  driving  rain.  The  coolies  and 
ponies  had  a  hard  time  in  the  sticky,  slippery  clay.  But 
the  stormy  elements  did  not  prevent  four  of  the  missionary 
women  from  meeting  us  at  Chung  Wha,  thirteen  miles  out, 
nor  did  they  deter  scores  of  Korean  Christians  from  tramp- 
ing several  miles  through  the  mud  and  rain  to  give  us 
hearty  welcome.  Both  missionaries  and  natives  brought 
bountiful  refreshments  with  them,  and  we  had  a  picnic 
lunch  of  the  most  delightful  kind  in  spite  of  the  dripping 
skies  and  the  fighting,  squealing  ponies  in  the  inn  court- 
yard. 

And  so  after  a  journey  of  twelve  days,  one  on  train  and 
steamer  and  eleven  in  chairs,  on  ponies  and  afoot,  visiting 
many  villages  and  speaking  daily  to  crowds  of  Koreans, 
we  arrived  at  the  historic  old  city  of  Pyongyang. 


PART  II 

THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  THE  POSSESSION 
OF  KOREA 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  RIVAL  CLAIMS  OF  CHINA  AND  JAPAN  AND  THE 
CHINA-JAPAN  WAR 

CHINESE  ascendancy  in  Korea  dates  from  an  early  period. 
We  have  already  seen  that  the  history  of  Korea  begins 
with  an  immigration  from  China,  and  that  Kija,  who  is 
supposed  to  have  been  the  first  ruler  of  the  country,  was 
a  Chinese.  Korea  received  from  China  two  of  her  religions, 
Buddhism  and  Confucianism,  her  written  language,  her 
literature  and  philosophy,  her  dress,  and  many  of  her 
customs.  Trade,  too,  was  largely  with  China.  Thrifty 
Chinese  shopkeepers  settled  in  various  parts  of  the  coun- 
try. They  formed  a  considerable  colony  in  Seoul  and 
speedily  gained  control  of  the  business  of  the  capital.  The 
Chinese  Government  asserted  and  the  Korean  Government 
conceded  political  superiority.  Embassies  from  Korea 
regularly  visited  Peking  to  pay  tribute.  The  amount 
gradually  diminished,  but  the  forms  were  scrupulously 
observed.  After  the  Manchu  occupation  of  China  each 
Korean  King,  on  ascending  the  throne,  paid  humble  re- 
spects to  the  Emperor  of  China  and  received  his  patent 
of  royalty  from  him.  This  investiture  and  the  annual 
visit  to  Peking  of  a  Korean  embassy  bearing  gifts  and 
protestations  of  allegiance  came  to  be  established  customs. 
Imperial  Chinese  commissioners  on  arriving  at  Seoul  were 
received  by  the  King  outside  of  the  capital  with  all  the 
honors  due  to  envoys  suzerain.  A  stately  arch  long  marked 
the  spot  where  this  ceremony  took  place.  The  Japanese 
treaty  of  1876  stipulated  that  "Chosen,  being  an  inde- 
pendent State,  enjoys  the  same  sovereign  rights  as  does 
Japan."  But  as  late  as  1890  the  King,  in  acknowledging 
the  thoughtfulness  of  the  Emperor  of  China  in  lessening 
the  expenses  of  an  embassy  of  condolence  after  the  death 

109 


110  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

of  the  Queen  Dowager,  wrote:  "Our  country  is  a  small 
Kingdom  and  a  vassal  State  of  China,  to  which  the  Emperor 
has  shown  his  graciousness  from  time  immemorial.  .  .  . 
The  Emperor's  consideration  for  his  vassal  State,  as  evinced 
by  his  thoughtfulness  in  matters  pertaining  to  the  Mission, 
is  fathomless.  How  admirable  and  satisfactory !  And  how 
glorious!" 

The  question  seesawed  back  and  forth,  China  claiming 
suzerainty  whenever  she  deemed  it  to  her  advantage  to 
do  so,  and  Korea  conceding  it  whenever  she  was  obliged 
to.  While  imperious  in  her  demands  in  ordinary  times, 
China  was  quick  to  disclaim  responsibility  when  it  was 
likely  to  mean  trouble  for  herself.  After  the  massacre  of 
French  missionaries,  in  1866,  China  was  not  at  all  disposed 
to  face  the  angry  French  Government  or  to  pay  a  heavy 
indemnity,  and  when  the  French  Charge  d'Affaires  pressed 
the  matter  at  Peking,  the  Tsung-li  Yamen  virtuously  pro- 
tested that  Korea  was  an  independent  state  for  which 
China  had  no  responsibility.  When,  in  1871,  Admiral 
Rodgers,  of  the  American  navy,  claimed  satisfaction  for  the 
looting  of  the  schooner  General  Sherman  and  the  murder  of 
its  crew,  in  1866,  the  Chinese  Government  took  the  same 
position.  And  in  1876,  when  the  Japanese  were  about  to 
send  an  expedition  to  Korea  to  insist  upon  their  demands, 
the  Chinese  reiterated  their  waiver  of  responsibility. 

It  was  a  costly  mistake,  for  when  China  wished  to  re- 
assert her  claims,  it  was  easy  for  objectors  to  quote  her 
own  admissions  that  the  country  was  independent.  In 
1882  China  insisted  that  the  words,  "Korea  has  always 
been  tributary  to  China,  and  this  is  admitted  by  the  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States,"  should  be  inserted  in  the  first 
part  of  the  treaty  between  Korea  and  America.  The 
American  Government  eliminated  the  clause,  and  China 
vainly  tried  to  have  the  same  provision  inserted  in  the 
treaty  with  Great  Britain  in  1883.  China  did  not  readily 
yield,  and  even  after  the  Korean  envoy  had  reached 
Washington,  the  Chinese  minister  told  him  that  he  must 
not  make  any  representations  to  the  American  Government 


RIVAL  CLAIMS  OF  CHINA  AND  JAPAN          111 

without  prior  consultation  with  the  Chinese  legation. 
The  President  of  the  United  States,  however,  took  the  posi- 
tion that  the  American  Government  was  dealing  with 
Korea  as  an  independent  state,  and  that  the  Korean  Min- 
ister could  be  received  only  on  that  supposition. 

In  spite  of  this  loss  of  diplomatic  ground,  the  Chinese 
Resident  in  Seoul  was  for  a  time  the  virtual  ruler  of  the 
country,  at  least  so  far  as  foreign  relations  were  concerned. 
From  1884  to  1893  the  Resident  was  the  famous  Yuan  Shih 
Kai,  who  afterward  became  President  of  the  Chinese  Re- 
public, a  man  of  extraordinary  ability  and  force  of  character, 
as  all  the  world  afterward  learned.  He  was  only  twenty- 
six  years  of  age  when  he  arrived  hi  Korea,  and  he  had  not 
then  acquired,  or  he  deemed  it  unnecessary  to  exercise,  the 
tact  in  dealing  with  men  that  he  showed  in  later  life,  al- 
though he  never  was  lacking  in  decision  and  ruthless  energy 
when  he  believed  them  to  be  required  to  gain  his  ends. 
At  any  rate,  his  policy  in  Seoul  was  that  of  "the  big  stick." 
He  maintained  an  establishment  of  royal  magnificence,  de- 
manded precedence  over  all  the  diplomatic  corps,  insisted 
on  his  right  to  sit  when  received  in  audience  by  the  King, 
and  conducted  himself  with  such  general  arrogance  that, 
while  he  completely  cowed  the  helpless  Korean  Govern- 
ment, he  so  strengthened  suspicion  and  dislike  among  Ko- 
reans and  Japanese  that  he  materially  hastened  the  out- 
break of  war  between  China  and  Japan. 

For  the  Chinese  claims  to  Korea  were  disputed  at  every 
point  by  the  Japanese.  They,  too,  could  point  to  numer- 
ous historical  precedents.  As  far  back  as  202  A.  D.,  the 
Empress  Regent  Jingu  of  Japan  had  led  an  expedition  to 
Korea  and  received  the  submission  of  the  Korean  court. 
For  eleven  hundred  years  after  that,  the  Japanese  claimed, 
and  the  Koreans  with  varying  degrees  of  reluctance  ad- 
mitted, allegiance  to  Japan.  Korean  embassies  bearing 
tribute  sailed  regularly  from  Fusan  to  the  court  of  the 
Shogun.  After  Ni  Taijo  gained  the  throne  of  Korea,  in 
1392,  the  tribute  embassies  to  Japan  became  less  numerous 
and  the  presents  less  costly  until  in  1460  they  ceased  alto- 


112  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

get/her.  The  Japanese  resented  the  growing  inclination  of 
the  Koreans  to  acknowledge  the  overlordship  of  China 
rather  than  that  of  Japan.  Internal  troubles  postponed 
active  interference,  but  the  day  of  reckoning  came  with 
the  accession  to  power  of  the  ambitious  and  martial-spirited 
Hideyoshi,  one  of  the  great  figures  in  Japanese  history,  who 
was  made  regent  of  Japan  July  31,  1585.  Angered  by  the 
refusal  of  the  Koreans  to  pay  tribute  and  to  give  the  Japa- 
nese certain  trading  privileges,  and  desiring  to  strike  at 
China  through  Korea,  he  sent  an  army  of  130,000  men 
into  the  peninsula  in  April,  1592.  This  army  was  memora- 
ble not  only  for  its  size  and  elaborate  equipment  but  for 
its  firearms,  which  the  Japanese  used  for  the  first  time  on 
a  large  scale  against  a  foreign  foe.  One  of  its  two  generals, 
Konishi  Yukinaga,  was  a  Roman  Catholic  Christian.  His 
army  swept  northward  in  an  unbroken  series  of  victories 
to  Pyongyang,  while  the  other  general,  Kato,  moved  north- 
east to  Gensan.  From  Pyongyang,  Konishi,  flushed  with 
victory,  sent  for  the  Japanese  fleet  at  Fusan  to  join  him. 
But  oddly  as  it  sounds  in  our  day,  when  the  Japanese  ves- 
sels set  forth,  they  were  met  and  decisively  defeated  by  the 
Korean  ships. 

Meantime,  the  repeated  appeals  of  the  Koreans  to  the 
Chinese  court  had  begun  to  be  heeded  and  a  Chinese  army 
marched  to  the  relief  of  the  Koreans.  The  first  detach- 
ment of  5,000  men  was  routed  at  Pyongyang  by  the  Japa- 
nese; but  a  second  force,  consisting  of  60,000  men,  was 
more  successful.  The  Japanese,  far  from  their  base  of  sup- 
plies, decimated  by  months  of  fighting  and  disease,  suffer- 
ing from  the  cold  of  an  inclement  winter,  and  harassed 
by  the  now  thoroughly  aroused  Koreans  who  kept  up  a 
guerilla  warfare,  were  compelled  to  retreat.  They  were 
joined  at  Seoul  by  the  division  of  Kato,  dismayed  by  the 
bombs  which  a  Korean  named  Richosen  had  invented,  and 
which,  fired  from  hooped  wooden  cannon,  exploded  with 
destructive  effect  among  the  invaders. 

The  poor  Koreans  suffered  heavily  between  the  con- 
tending armies  of  China  and  Japan.  The  country  was 


RIVAL  CLAIMS  OF  CHINA  AND  JAPAN  113 

ravaged,  the  crops  were  destroyed,  and  many  cities  sacked. 
The  Japanese,  fearing  treachery  on  the  part  of  the  Ko- 
reans, burned  a  large  part  of  Seoul  and  drove  out  the 
inhabitants.  Multitudes  of  the  defenseless  people  were 
butchered  with  such  ruthlessness  that  the  memory  of  that 
fearful  slaughter  remains  to  this  day.  At  a  great  battle 
fought  soon  afterward,  near  Seoul,  the  Chinese  and  Ko- 
reans were  driven  back  with  heavy  loss,  and  after  much 
suffering  on  both  sides,  peace  was  concluded  May  22, 
1593.  The  Japanese  evacuated  Seoul,  which  was  im- 
mediately occupied  by  the  Chinese.  By  the  terms  agreed 
upon,  Japan  held  the  three  southern  provinces,  Hideyoshi 
was  recognized  as  King  of  Korea,  and  tribute  was  to  be 
sent  to  Japan. 

The  peace  was  short-lived.  Despite  the  treaty,  the  Japa- 
nese captured  Chin-chiu,  an  important  castle  forty  miles 
from  Fusan.  China  protested  and  began  to  mobilize  an- 
other army.  A  Chinese  embassy  to  Japan  in  October, 
1596,  presented  a  letter  so  patronizing  in  its  assumption 
of  superiority  that  Hideyoshi  dismissed  it  in  a  rage  and 
January  7,  1597,  despatched  a  second  army  of  invasion, 
numbering  163,000  men.  The  Koreans,  encouraged  by 
their  former  victory,  formed  a  fleet  of  two  hundred  ships 
which  were  formidable  for  those  days  in  size,  weight,  and 
equipment.  This  time,  however,  the  Japanese  were  better 
prepared,  and  in  an  engagement  of  only  two  hours  sunk  or 
captured  one  hundred  and  seventy-four  of  the  Korean 
vessels.  They  were  equally  successful  on  land.  The  Chi- 
nese had  taken  possession  of  the  castle  at  Nan-on,  and 
greatly  strengthened  its  fortifications,  but  the  Japanese 
furiously  stormed  it.  The  defenders  fought  desperately 
but  unavailingly,  and  a  gruesome  heap  of  3,726  severed 
heads  marked  the  bloody  victory  of  the  assailants. 

September  30,  the  Japanese  advanced  into  the  interior. 
The  panic-stricken  Koreans  abandoned  the  castle  of  Teru- 
shiu,  and  the  invaders  razed  it  and  marched  on  toward 
Seoul.  October  19  found  them  at  Chin-zen,  seventeen 
miles  from  the  capital.  Here  they  hesitated,  for  while 


114  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

they  had  been  winning  brilliant  victories,  their  ships  had 
met  the  combined  Chinese  and  Korean  fleets  and  suffered 
disastrous  defeat.  It  is  curious,  in  the  light  of  present-day 
conditions,  to  reflect  that  China  and  Korea  were  once  more 
powerful  on  the  water  than  the  Japanese. 

Deprived  of  the  supplies  and  naval  support  that  they 
had  confidently  counted  on  at  the  port  of  Seoul,  dismayed 
by  the  report  that  the  Chinese  general  Keikai  had  been 
reinforced  and  was  advancing  at  the  head  of  100,000  men, 
realizing  that  winter  was  approaching,  that  the  country 
was  ravaged  and  desolate,  that  the  whole  population  was 
against  them,  that  provisions  were  running  short,  and  that 
their  ranks  were  thinned  by  wounds  and  disease,  the  Japa- 
nese reluctantly  retreated.  Sullenly  determined  to  do  all 
the  damage  possible,  they  looted  the  houses  and  castles  of 
the  Koreans  and  burned  the  fine  old  historic  cities  of  Kion- 
chiu,  the  ancient  capital  of  Shinra,  and  Keku-shiu,  another 
famous  city.  November  18,  they  arrived  at  Uru-san  on  the 
seacoast,  thirty-five  miles  from  Fusan,  where  they  fever- 
ishly toiled  day  and  night  to  fortify  themselves  before  the 
Chinese  and  Korean  armies  could  arrive.  January  30, 
1598,  the  allies,  80,000  strong,  furiously  attacked  the 
23,000  Japanese.  In  the  desperate  battle  that  ensued, 
three-fourths  of  the  Japanese  are  said  to  have  been  killed 
or  wounded.  The  Chinese  and  Koreans  of  that  day  knew 
how  to  fight,  and  day  after  day  the  terrific  struggle  was 
renewed  till  the  defenders  were  so  worn  and  emaciated  that, 
as  one  chronicle  quaintly  runs,  "their  legs  were  as  lean  as 
bamboo  sticks."  Thirst  and  starvation  added  to  the 
terrors  of  cold  and  battle,  for  the  assailants  had  cut  off  the 
water  and  food  supply  of  the  garrison.  But  the  undaunted 
Japanese  fought  stubbornly  on  till,  on  February  9,  a  relieving 
column  from  Fusan  decisively  defeated  the  Chinese  at  the 
battle  of  Gisen.  The  besiegers  retreated.  Ships  laden  with 
provisions  arrived,  and  the  beleaguered  and  decimated  Japa- 
nese found  themselves  snatched  from  the  very  jaws  of  de- 
struction. The  crippled  and  famished  survivors  laid  aside 
their  bloody  armor,  ravenously  devoured  the  fresh  food, 


RIVAL  CLAIMS  OF  CHINA  AND  JAPAN          115 

and  sent  to  Kyoto  the  ears  and  noses  of  13,238  Chinese  and 
Koreans  as  trophies  of  their  victory.  September  9  of  the 
same  year  (1598)  Hideyoshi  died  at  the  age  of  sixty-three, 
and  hi  accordance  with  his  dying  orders  the  Japanese  army 
in  Korea  sailed  for  home. 

This  ended  the  war  of  the  second  Japanese  invasion,  a 
war  as  unnecessary  as  it  was  brutal,  which  cost  the  Japa- 
nese 50,000  men,  and  in  which  the  bodies  of  185,738  Koreans, 
and  29,014  Chinese,  214,752  in  all,  were  said  to  have  been 
left  on  the  field.  Two  of  the  Korean  leaders  won  undying 
fame:  Admiral  Yi,  whose  skill  and  valor  were  the  chief 
factor  in  the  defeat  of  the  Japanese  at  sea,  and  General 
Kim  Tuk-nyung,  who  displayed  such  high  military  quali- 
ties that  his  distinguished  enemy,  General  Konishi,  ordered 
his  portrait  painted,  and  when  he  received  it,  ejaculated: 
"This  man  is  indeed  a  general." 

Japan  for  a  time  turned  her  attention  to  her  own  affairs, 
and  stricken  Korea  sorrowfully  considered  her  ruined  cities 
and  weed-grown  fields.  The  process  of  reconstruction  was 
slow,  for  fire  and  sword,  famine  and  pestilence  had  left 
little.  Roots  and  berries  were  all  that  the  starving  people 
could  find  to  eat,  and  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  ever-bounti- 
ful fisheries  the  remaining  population  could  hardly  have 
survived  until  the  first  harvests  could  be  ripened.  Korea 
never  fully  recovered  from  the  disaster.  The  Hideyoshi  in- 
vasions left  her  a  ruined  country.  Many  of  the  cities  were 
rebuilt  only  in  part,  and  they  squalidly.  Some  were  never 
rebuilt  at  all.  Destroyed  palaces,  libraries,  and  treasures 
of  art  have  not  been  replaced.  Hovels  succeeded  houses, 
abject  poverty  followed  wealth,  and  hopeless  despair  set- 
tled upon  the  people  like  a  pall.  The  spirit  of  the  Koreans 
was  permanently  broken.  "The  accursed  nation"  the 
Koreans  long  called  the  Japanese  as  they  bitterly  thought 
of  the  authors  of  their  fallen  estate. 

The  failure  of  the  Japanese  to  gain  a  permanent  foothold 
gave  temporary  respite  to  the  sorely  beset  Koreans;  but 
in  1623  lyemitse,  under  the  title  of  Tycoon,  renewed  the 
demand  for  tribute.  The  Koreans  were  in  no  mood  to 


116  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

risk  another  invasion,  and  the  following  year  an  embassy 
loaded  with  presents  proceeded  to  Japan,  where  it  was  re- 
ceived with  gorgeous  ceremony.  For  a  considerable  period 
thereafter  a  similar  embassy  journeyed  to  Japan  each  year, 
the  size  of  the  embassy  increasing  until  it  reached  400 
persons.  The  Japanese  enjoyed  this  annual  and  pompous 
homage  for  a  while,  but  after  the  submission  of  Korea  to 
the  Manchu  throne,  in  1667,  the  value  of  the  tribute 
dwindled  until  the  embassies  went  almost  empty-handed. 
The  Japanese  insisted  upon  their  coming  as  a  concession 
to  their  pride,  even  though  they  meant  nothing  more  than 
an  exchange  of  presents;  but  the  expense  involved  in  suita- 
bly entertaining  the  numerous  tribute-bearers  gradually 
became  a  burden,  and  in  1790  the  embassies  were  ordered 
to  stop  at  the  island  of  Tsushima,  where  they  were  enter- 
tained by  the  local  daimios,  who  received  a  grant  from 
the  Tycoon  for  this  purpose.  This  arrangement  was  kept 
up  as  a  mere  form  until  1832,  when  the  embassies  were  dis- 
continued. 

While  the  harassed  Koreans  were  thus  being  relieved 
from  the  worst  of  their  troubles  with  Japan,  new  trouble 
had  developed  on  their  northern  frontier.  The  restless  and 
powerful  Manchu  tribes  had  taken  advantage  of  the  des- 
perate struggle  between  the  Chinese  and  the  Japanese  to 
invade  Chinese  territory.  Weakened  by  the  war  with  Japan, 
the  Chinese  were  ill  prepared  to  resist  the  belligerent  Man- 
chus.  The  Ming  Emperor  managed  to  have  the  leader  of 
the  Manchus  beheaded;  but  this,  so  far  from  disheartening 
the  Manchus,  roused  them  to  greater  fury,  and  they  ad- 
vanced in  vast  hordes  upon  Liao-tung.  The  frightened 
Chinese  demanded  an  army  of  20,000  men  from  the  Ko- 
reans; but  in  spite  of  this  reinforcement  the  Manchus  de- 
cisively defeated  the  allied  Chinese  and  Korean  armies  in 
1619.  The  Manchu  general  was  not  disposed  to  retaliate  on 
the  Koreans,  for  he  remembered  their  services  in  helping 
to  stay  the  tide  of  Japanese  conquest.  But  he  significantly 
intimated  to  the  Korean  King  that  for  the  future  it  would 
be  the  part  of  wisdom  not  to  take  sides  in  the  struggle  be- 


RIVAL  CLAIMS  OF  CHINA  AND  JAPAN  117 

tween  the  Chinese  and  Manchus.  The  Korean  King  failed 
to  heed  the  warning  and  so  actively  aided  the  Chinese  that 
in  1627  the  Manchus  angrily  turned  upon  the  Koreans. 
Crossing  the  Yalu,  they  destroyed  cities  and  ravaged  fields 
all  the  way  to  Seoul.  The  King  was  forced  to  capitulate 
and  to  sign  a  treaty  of  allegiance  to  the  Manchu  overlords. 
As  soon,  however,  as  the  Manchu  army  had  returned  to  its 
struggle  with  the  Chinese,  the  Koreans  treacherously  vio- 
lated the  treaty.  They  paid  dear.  The  Manchus  marched 
back,  captured  Seoul,  and,  crossing  to  the  island  of  Kang-wa, 
where  the  ladies  of  the  court  had  taken  refuge,  they  seized 
it  also.  The  humbled  King  prostrated  himself  nine  times 
before  the  wrathful  Manchu,  confessed  his  crimes,  and 
signed  a  treaty  (February,  1637),  promising  never  to  have 
anything  more  to  do  with  the  Chinese,  and  to  pay  tribute 
to  the  Manchu  court.  A  memorial  stand  was  erected,  and 
the  victorious  Manchus  marched  back  to  China. 

The  Ming  Emperor,  now  threatened  by  a  formidable  re- 
bellion, made  peace  with  the  Manchus,  who  helped  him  to 
suppress  the  rebellion,  and  then  entered  Peking,  deposed 
him  and  placed  Chien  Chi,  the  son  of  their  own  late  King, 
upon  the  throne  of  the  Middle  Kingdom.  So  great  was  the 
fear  which  the  Manchurian  invaders  had  inspired  among 
the  Koreans  that  a  strip  of  territory  on  the  Yalu  River, 
sixty  miles  wide  and  three  hundred  miles  long,  was  left 
uncultivated  and  depopulated.  It  failed  to  be  a  real  bar- 
rier as  it  speedily  became  the  refuge  of  outlaws  from  both 
sides  of  the  line.  In  1875,  the  King  of  Korea  sent  a  com- 
plaint to  the  Emperor  of  China  regarding  the  danger  to 
which  he  was  exposed  from  the  lawless  characters  which 
infested  this  neutral  strip,  and  whom  he  could  not  reach. 
Li  Hung  Chang  thereupon  marched  into  the  region  at  the 
head  of  a  military  force.  Impressed  with  the  beauty  of 
the  scenery,  the  fertility  of  the  soil,  and  the  accessibility 
of  the  region  by  the  river,  he  recommended  to  the  Em- 
peror that  the  strip  be  added  to  Chinese  territory,  and  that 
a  wall  and  moat  be  built  along  the  southern  boundary 
for  the  protection  of  the  Koreans.  The  King  of  Korea 


118  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

thoughtlessly  agreed  to  this  arrangement,  the  result  being 
that  he  lost  his  claim  to  an  exceedingly  valuable  region 
without  gaining  the  protection  he  desired,  for  the  hastily 
constructed  wall  and  moat  proved  to  be  of  small  defensive 
value.  By  mutual  agreement,  a  Korean  caught  on  the 
Chinese  side  of  the  line  was  to  be  summarily  executed,  and 
a  Chinese  caught  on  the  Korean  side  was  to  suffer  a  like 
fate.  Under  the  more  stable  conditions  of  later  times,  this 
neutral  strip  rapidly  filled  up  with  inhabitants  and  became 
relatively  prosperous,  but  for  a  long  period  it  was  a  menace 
to  peace. 

Korea  continued  to  pay  tribute  regularly  to  the  new  Em- 
peror of  China.  The  amount  was  reduced  to  one-third 
in  1643,  and  in  1650  a  Korean  lady  who  became  a  favorite 
at  the  imperial  court  in  Peking  was  able  to  secure  a  further 
modification  so  that  the  tribute  became  little  more  than  a 
formal  recognition  of  China's  suzerainty.  Still,  the  Chi- 
nese punctiliously  insisted  upon  it,  and  in  1695  they  made 
the  King  of  Korea  pay  a  penalty  of  ten  thousand  ounces  of 
silver  for  ignoring  a  point  which  they  deemed  essential  to 
their  dignity.  The  accession  of  a  Korean  ruler  was  not 
considered  complete  until  two  Chinese  functionaries  had 
solemnly  invested  him  with  the  crown.  Korea  profited  in 
various  ways  by  this  close  relationship,  especially  in  the 
domain  of  learning,  for  many  scholarly  and  patriotic  Chi- 
nese who  chafed  under  the  Manchu  rule  came  to  Korea, 
bringing  with  them  more  advanced  learning  and  civilization. 

Fusan,  however,  remained  in  the  possession  of  the  Japa- 
nese, who  kept  it  as  a  convenient  commercial  port  and,  in 
case  of  further  need,  a  military  base.  The  occupation  of 
their  southern  port  by  an  alien  Power  was  a  sore  grievance 
to  the  proud  Koreans.  However,  relations  with  Japan  now 
remained  comparatively  quiescent  for  a  long  period.  In 
1866  the  frightened  King  of  Korea  asked  Japan  for  help  in 
dealing  with  the  French  Government,  which  had  been  ex- 
asperated by  the  massacre  of  French  Roman  Catholic  mis- 
sionaries, referred  to  on  a  preceding  page.  Japan,  however, 
had  no  idea  of  embroiling  herself  with  France,  and  made  no 


I 


RIVAL  CLAIMS  OF  CHINA  AND  JAPAN  119 

reply.  More  than  two  hundred  years  of  comparative  free- 
dom from  Japanese  domination  had  cast  Japan's  earlier 
claims  and  conquests  somewhat  into  the  background  when 
the  islanders  suddenly  revived  their  claims.  The  overthrow 
of  feudalism  and  the  Shogunate,  in  1868,  and  the  unifying  of 
the  nation  under  the  Mikado  ended  the  long  internal  strug- 
gles of  the  Japanese,  and  led  them  to  look  again  beyond 
then*  own  boundaries  with  a  new  sense  of  power  and  ambi- 
tion. An  embassy  was  promptly  despatched  to  Korea  to 
suggest  to  the  Koreans  the  expediency  of  renewing  their 
recognition  of  Japanese  suzerainty.  The  King  was  then 
a  minor,  and  his  father,  the  Tai-wen-kun,  was  regent.  A 
haughty  man  at  all  times,  he  was  just  then  exalted  above 
measure  by  a  victory  over  the  French  and  his  apparently 
successful  effort  to  stamp  out  the  Roman  Catholic  mis- 
sions. He  refused  the  Japanese  demand  so  curtly  that  the 
Japanese  were  furious.  A  hot-headed  party  wanted  to 
declare  war  at  once;  but  internal  conditions  in  Japan  were 
not  yet  sufficiently  stable  to  make  it  prudent  to  risk  a  for- 
eign war.  The  Japanese  Government  therefore  swallowed 
its  wrath  and  waited  for  a  more  favorable  opportunity  to 
take  revenge.  The  effort  to  induce  Korea  to  resume  its 
former  relation  as  a  tributary  state  was  renewed  in  1873, 
and  again  in  1875,  but  still  in  vain.  The  young  King  of 
Korea  had  become  of  age  in  the  former  year  and  begun  to 
reign  in  his  own  name.  He  soon  proved  himself  to  be  a 
better  ruler  than  the  brutal  and  reactionary  Tai-wen-kun, 
but  he  was  not  disposed  to  become  a  vassal  of  the  Mikado. 
Matters  came  to  a  crisis  September  19,  1875.  A  Japa- 
nese vessel,  the  Unyo  Kuan,  landed  a  party  of  sailors  for 
water  near  Kang-wa.  The  Koreans  fired  upon  them,  per- 
haps believing  them  to  be  French  or  Americans,  with 
whom  there  had  recently  been  trouble.  Whereupon  the 
Japanese  stormed  the  fort  and  made  short  work  of  its  de- 
fenders. Japan  promptly  sent  a  commissioner  to  Peking 
to  ascertain  what  responsibility  the  Chinese  Government 
was  disposed  to  assume,  and  January  6,  1876,  sent  an  ex- 
pedition of  800  armed  men  to  Korea,  in  command  of  Gen- 


120  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

eral  Kuroda.  The  Chinese  Government  disavowed  all  re- 
sponsibility, and  advised  the  Korean  King  to  make  a  treaty 
with  the  offended  Japanese.  The  treaty,  which  was  signed 
February  27  (1876),  opened  the  ports  of  Fusan,  Chemulpo, 
and  Gensan  to  Japanese  trade,  provided  for  a  Japanese 
Minister  at  Seoul,  and  asserted  that  "Chosen,  being  an  in- 
dependent state,  enjoys  the  same  sovereign  rights  as  Japan." 
This  recognition  of  Korean  independence,  of  course,  was 
purely  "diplomatic,"  but  it  was  an  advantage  to  Japan 
since  it  afforded  her  an  excuse  for  ignoring  the  claims  of 
China.  The  meaning  of  the  treaty  was  significantly  illus- 
trated three  months  later  when  a  Korean  embassy  sailed 
from  Fusan  for  the  court  of  Japan,  the  first  since  the  twelfth 
century.  It  was  received  with  elaborate  ceremonies  at  the 
Mikado's  court,  and  ere  long  Japanese  influence  was  again 
in  the  ascendant.  In  1882  Japan  strengthened  her  posi- 
tion by  a  further  convention  with  Korea,  one  clause  of  which 
gave  her  the  right  to  keep  troops  in  the  country  for  the  pro- 
tection of  resident  Japanese.  Japan  thereafter  continued 
to  maintain  a  garrison  in  the  Korean  capital.  As  China 
also  kept  a  garrison  there  after  the  revolution  of  1882,  the 
rival  claimants  were  face  to  face  in  circumstances  which 
might  at  any  time  develop  trouble.  The  helpless  King  was 
between  two  masters,  each  jealous  of  the  other,  and  each 
interpreting  his  independence  to  mean  that  his  rival  must 
keep  hands  off  while  he  himself  was  free  to  push  his  claims 
to  the  utmost. 

The  situation  became  more  complicated  and  the  relations 
between  China  and  Japan  more  strained.  A  clash  was 
temporarily  averted  when  Viceroy  Li  Hung  Chang  and 
Marquis  Ito  signed  a  convention  at  Tien-tsin,  in  1885,  in 
which  it  was  agreed  that  both  nations  should  withdraw 
their  troops  from  Korea,  and  that  if  any  "grave  disturbance " 
should  occur  "of  great  moment  or  concern  to  China  or 
Japan,  such  as  might  of  necessity  call  for  troops  from  the 
outside  for  the  suppression  thereof,"  either  nation  sending 
such  troops  should  give  due  notice  in  writing  to  the  other. 
This  helped  matters  for  a  while,  but  it  proved  to  be  a  truce 


RIVAL  CLAIMS  OF  CHINA  AND  JAPAN  121 

rather  than  a  peace.  I  shall  have  occasion  to  refer  in  a 
later  chapter  to  some  of  the  plots,  counter-plots,  and  acts 
of  violence  which  characterized  the  next  decade.  The 
blaze  was  finally  started  by  the  Tong-haks,  whose  mingling 
of  patriotic  and  lawless  elements  I  have  described  in  a 
former  chapter.  In  the  early  months  of  1894,  they  became 
so  troublesome  and  formidable  that  the  frightened  King 
asked  China  to  help  him  in  suppressing  the  rebellion,  which 
was  rapidly  developing.  China  promptly  responded,  and 
June  7  troops  were  despatched  to  Korea.  The  Chinese 
Government  notified  the  Japanese  legation  in  Peking,  in  a 
memorandum  which  included  the  following  words:  "It  is 
in  harmony  with  our  constant  practice  to  protect  our  tribu- 
tary states  by  sending  our  troops  to  assist  them,  and  Gen- 
eral Weh  has  been  ordered  to  proceed  to  Zenra  ...  to 
restore  the  peace  of  our  tributary  state."  This  was  too 
much  for  the  Japanese  Government.  It  sharply  replied 
that  it  did  not  recognize  Korea  as  a  tributary  of  China,  and 
promptly  availed  itself  of  its  rights  under  the  treaty  of 
Tien-tsin  to  send  troops  also.  The  result  was  that  while 
2,000  Chinese  troops  landed  at  Asan,  10,000  Japanese 
troops  landed  at  Chemulpo  in  July,  marched  to  Seoul  and 
occupied  it.  China  retaliated  by  sending  more  troops  and 
a  fleet. 

Negotiations  followed.  Japan  proposed  that  the  rival 
Powers  co-operate  in  effecting  certain  reforms  in  Korea. 
China  objected,  insisted  that  the  Koreans  should  be  left 
to  work  out  their  own  reforms,  and  demanded  that  the 
Japanese  troops  withdraw.  The  Japanese  refused  to  com- 
ply and  July  14  notified  the  Chinese  Government  that  the 
coming  of  any  more  Chinese  troops  would  be  regarded  as 
an  unfriendly  act.  July  20  the  Japanese  requested  the 
Korean  King  to  order  the  Chinese  troops  out  of  the  country 
on  pain  of  "decisive  measures."  The  ministers  of  other 
Powers  intervened  and  suggested  that  the  Japanese  and 
Chinese  troops  retire  simultaneously.  China  professed  to 
be  willing  to  accede  to  this,  but  July  23  the  Japanese,  learn- 
ing that  Chinese  reinforcements  were  on  the  way  by  both 


122 

sea  and  land,  took  possession  of  the  imperial  palace,  made 
the  King  a  virtual  prisoner,  and  placed  the  government 
under  the  control  of  the  Tai-wen-kun,  the  King's  father. 
The  Japanese  Government  denied  that  it  had  received  from 
China  the  notice  that  the  convention  of  Tien-tsin  called  for 
before  either  government  was  to  send  additional  troops  to 
Korea.  Li  Hung  Chang,  by  whose  advice  they  were  sent, 
afterward  claimed  that  the  government  at  Peking  had  as- 
sured him  that  due  notice  had  been  sent,  and  that  he  learned 
later  that  he  had  been  deceived.  However  this  may  have 
been,  July  25  two  Japanese  cruisers  met  three  Chinese  war- 
ships convoying  a  transport  with  1,200  soldiers  bound  for 
Korea.  The  Chinese  rashly  opened  fire;  but  in  the  en- 
gagement that  followed  the  Japanese  destroyed  one  of  the 
Chinese  ships,  disabled  the  second,  captured  the  third,  and 
sent  the  transport  and  its  soldiers  to  the  bottom.  Three 
days  later,  July  28,  the  Japanese  general  in  Seoul  requested 
the  Chinese  commander  at  Asan  to  withdraw  his  men  from 
Korea;  and,  on  receiving  a  defiant  reply,  attacked  in  such 
force  that  the  Chinese  were  utterly  routed  and  fled  pell-mell 
toward  Pyengyang.  July  30,  the  Korean  Government,  un- 
der the  complaisant  Tai-wen-kun,  abrogated  the  conven- 
tions with  China,  and  on  the  first  day  of  August,  1894,  war 
was  formally  declared. 

The  contestants  appeared  to  be  grotesquely  unmatched. 
The  Chinese  were  overwhelmingly  superior  in  numbers. 
The  Western  world  was  amazed  at  the  supposed  temerity 
of  small  Japan  in  attacking  mighty  China.  It  seemed  like 
a  terrier  attacking  a  mastiff,  and  they  expected  to  see  the 
big  dog  crush  the  little  one  with  a  single  bite  of  his  massive 
jaws.  But  the  little  fighter  proved  to  be  all  bone  and 
sinew,  and  pluck  and  skill,  and  the  large  one  to  be  as  flabby 
as  a  jelly-fish,  and  as  helpless  as  a  prize  pig.  The  Chinese 
were  pathetically  ignorant  of  the  methods  of  modern  war, 
and  unprepared  for  effective  war  of  any  kind.  The  Peking 
government  was  in  the  hands  of  selfish  and  corrupt  officials 
who  knew  little  and  cared  less  about  the  outfitting  of  an 
army  and  the  proper  planning  of  a  campaign.  They  de- 


RIVAL  CLAIMS  OF  CHINA  AND  JAPAN  123 

spised  the  Japanese  as  an  insignificant  and  inferior  bar- 
barian nation,  underrated  their  strength,  and  were  intent 
only  upon  enriching  themselves.  The  regiments  were 
largely  made  up  of  paupers,  criminals,  and  other  dregs  of  the 
population;  for  the  Chinese  regarded  the  profession  of 
arms  with  contempt,  and  respectable  and  efficient  men 
avoided  military  service.  The  officers,  like  then*  civil 
superiors,  thought  only  of  their  own  interests,  swindled  the 
government  and  their  subordinates,  and  greedily  accepted 
Japanese  bribes  for  betraying  information.  The  disgrace- 
ful situation  was  relieved  only  by  the  devotion  of  a  hand- 
ful of  army  and  naval  officers,  chief  of  whom  was  Admiral 
Ting,  and  he  committed  suicide  after  the  disastrous  battle 
before  Wei-hai  Wei. 

The  equipment  of  the  Chinese  troops  would  have  been 
amusing  if  its  grim  consequences  had  not  been  so  pitiful. 
Many  soldiers  were  armed  only  with  spears  or  bayonets 
fastened  to  the  ends  of  poles.  Many  who  had  guns  carried 
old  muzzle-loading  muskets,  or  the  still  more  antiquated 
gingals.  A  few  had  modern  rifles,  but  they  were  of  varying 
calibers.  Cartridges  of  assorted  sizes  were  thrown  in  piles 
on  the  ground,  and  each  soldier  had  to  find,  if  he  could, 
the  ones  that  fitted  his  particular  gun.  The  officers  bore 
umbrellas  and  fans,  and  in  some  instances  singing  birds. 
There  was  practically  no  discipline  except  in  the  command 
of  General  Tso,  and  the  men  drank  and  pillaged  and  quar- 
relled incessantly.  What  food  the  government  supplied 
was  largely  stolen  by  dishonest  officers,  and  the  men  were 
left  to  forage  for  themselves.  The  result  was  that  the 
people  of  the  land  through  which  the  army  passed  suffered 
almost  as  much  as  if  they  had  been  attacked  by  an  enemy. 
For  fighting  purposes,  the  Chinese  regiments  were  hardly 
more  formidable  than  flocks  of  sheep,  making  a  show  of  a 
few  volleys,  and  then  running  away  as  fast  as  their  legs 
could  carry  them.  China  had  men  of  splendid  strength, 
but  they  saw  no  reason  why  they  should  leave  then-  shops 
and  farms  in  order  to  be  killed  in  a  war  which  did  not  in- 
terest them.  The  Manchu  government  officials  had  gotten 


124  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

themselves  into  the  war,  and  they  should  get  out  of  it  as 
best  they  could  with  the  aid  of  such  offscourings  of  Chinese 
towns  as  they  could  hire  or  compel  to  enlist. 

Japan,  on  the  other  hand,  though  small  and  poor  in 
comparison  with  her  huge  opponent,  was  thoroughly  pre- 
pared for  war.  Her  ablest  men  were  warlike  in  spirit, 
zealous  students  of  modern  military  science,  and  experts 
in  military  organization.  The  soldiers  were  hardy,  brave, 
and  highly  disciplined.  The  equipment  was  the  very  best 
— rifles,  artillery,  and  warships  of  the  latest  patterns. 
The  Intelligence  Department  had  maps  showing  every  hill 
and  valley,  every  creek  and  tree  in  the  whole  zone  of  opera- 
tions, and  surveys  and  soundings  of  every  square  rod  of 
rivers  and  coast-line.  The  General  Staff  knew  exactly  what 
it  wanted  to  do,  and  where  and  how  to  do  it;  and  the  whole 
military  machine  moved  with  a  smoothness,  speed,  and 
effectiveness  which  amazed  European  observers  and  boded 
ill  for  the  Chinese. 

The  war  was  short,  bloody,  and  decisive.  Seven  months 
sufficed  to  carry  out  the  Japanese  plans.  A  series  of  swift 
successes  culminated  in  the  battle  of  Pyengyang,  September 
15.  The  Chinese  met  the  advancing  Japanese,  beating 
gongs,  waving  banners,  and  firing  their  old  blunderbusses 
after  a  fashion  that  did  but  little  more  damage  than  if  they 
had  been  bunches  of  firecrackers.  The  Japanese  replied 
with  a  hail  of  bullets  and  shells.  The  result  was  appalling. 
The  plain  near  Pyengyang  quickly  became  a  shambles. 
The  Chinese  general  Tso  was  killed  at  the  first  onset,  and 
his  troops  ignominiously  fled.  That  night  the  Japanese 
captured  the  Chinese  forts,  and  the  Chinese  army,  to  the 
number  of  about  12,000,  made  its  way  through  the  city  and 
attempted  to  escape  along  the  road  to  the  north.  Estimates 
of  its  casualties  vary,  but  it  is  believed  that  nearly  5,000 
men  were  killed,  while  the  Japanese  losses  were  only  250. 
It  was  a  slaughter  rather  than  a  battle.  The  panic-stricken 
Chinese  who  succeeded  in  escaping  were  completely  demoral- 
ized. The  retreat  became  a  rout,  and  the  war  was  prac- 
tically ended.  During  the  entire  war  the  Japanese  lost 


RIVAL  CLAIMS  OF  CHINA  AND  JAPAN  125 

only  3,284  men,  of  whom  only  795  were  killed  or  died  from 
wounds,  all  the  rest  dying  from  disease.  The  Chinese  are 
said  to  have  lost  27,917  in  battle,  besides  uncounted  num- 
bers who  died  of  disease. 

Chinese  commissioners,  headed  by  Viceroy  Li  Hung 
Chang,  and  counselled  by  the  American  Honorable  John 
W.  Foster,  met  the  Japanese  Count  Ito  and  Viscount  Mutso 
in  Shimonoseki  and  concluded  a  treaty  of  peace  April  17, 
1895.  It  was  a  trying  experience  for  the  proud  old  Viceroy, 
and  all  the  more  so  because  he  had  undertaken  it  with 
great  reluctance,  keenly  feeling  the  humiliating  position  in 
which  he  was  placed.  The  treaty  recognized  the  indepen- 
dence of  Korea,  ceded  the  Liao-tung  peninsula,  including 
Port  Arthur,  to  the  Japanese,  bound  the  Chinese  to  pay  a 
heavy  indemnity,  and  made  several  other  concessions  to 
the  victors. 

The  independence  of  Korea  was  formally  proclaimed  by 
the  King  at  the  Altar  of  the  Spirits  of  the  Lamb,  January 
8,  1895.  The  Japanese  Minister,  Count  Inouye,  caused  the 
occasion  to  be  celebrated  with  considerable  ceremony. 
The  Korean  ruler  went  through  the  elaborately  prescribed 
form  with  poor  grace,  and  the  Korean  officials  looked  on  in 
troubled  silence.  They  were  not  so  lacking  in  intelligence 
as  to  fail  to  understand  that,  while  Korea  by  that  act  be- 
came independent  of  China,  she  did  not  obtain  any  more 
freedom  than  she  had  before,  but  simply  transferred  her 
allegiance  to  Japan;  and  they  preferred  China.  The  King 
was  induced  to  form  an  assembly  of  twenty-one  counsellors 
"for  the  discussion  of  all  matters,  grave  and  trivial,  within 
the  realm."  This  body  solemnly  convened  July  30,  but 
after  a  few  slimly  attended  and  ineffective  meetings  was 
superseded  by  a  privy  council,  December  17.  Petitions 
were  presented  to  the  throne  to  "expel"  the  foreign  con- 
queror, but  they  could  avail  nothing.  For  a  few  years  the 
outward  forms  of  independence  were  maintained  after  a 
fashion.  For  the  edification  of  the  outside  world  and  to 
lend  color  to  the  appearance  of  reality,  these  forms  cul- 
minated October  15,  1907,  in  a  change  of  title.  Prior  to 


126  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

that  date  the  ruler's  designation  was  "Bang."  This  word 
(Wang)  may  signify  a  tributary  prince.  "Emperor,"  how- 
ever (Hwang-ti)  means  in  Asia  the  sovereign  of  an  inde- 
pendent state.  And  so  the  world  saw  the  hollowly  pa- 
thetic spectacle  of  the  timid,  feeble  King  solemnly  assum- 
ing the  title  of  Emperor.  Seldom  have  imperial  honors 
been  worn  in  poorer  state  or  exercised  with  scantier  dignity. 
The  frail  reed  of  Korean  sovereignty  could  not  stand  amid 
the  international  storms  of  the  Far  East  in  the  twentieth 
century.  What  followed  will  be  discussed  in  a  later  chap- 
ter. 

Space  limits  have  compelled  me  to  give  only  in  outline 
an  account  of  the  long  and  complicated  struggle  between 
China  and  Japan  for  the  possession  of  Korea.  But  this 
much  appeared  to  be  necessary  to  show  how  deeply  rooted 
in  former  centuries  some  of  the  present  conditions  and 
problems  are.  Readers  who  wish  to  delve  more  deeply 
into  the  history  of  the  country  will  find  ample  materials  in 
Homer  B.  Hulbert's  The  History  of  Korea,  and  William 
Elliot  Griffis's  Corea  the  Hermit  Nation,  to  whose  stores  of 
facts  I  have  been  much  indebted. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
RUSSIA'S  EFFORT  TO  OBTAIN  KOREA 

I  HAVE  discussed  in  another  book1  Russia's  ambition  to 
reach  an  open  port  on  the  north  Pacific  Ocean,  the  Russian 
advance  across  northern  Asia,  the  remarkable  natural  re- 
sources of  Siberia,  and  the  construction  of  the  Trans- 
Siberian  Railway,  which  was  begun  in  1891  and  practically 
completed  in  1902.  It  was  a  great  and  costly  enterprise, 
splendid  in  conception  and  in  achievement,  flinging  a  high- 
way of  steel  across  5,426  miles  of  territory  which  the  world 
had  regarded  as  a  wilderness  of  sand  and  snow. 

There  was  nothing  to  interfere  with  Russia's  freedom  to 
run  the  line  of  the  Trans-Siberian  Railway  wherever  she 
liked,  except  two  obstacles,  one  natural  and  the  other 
political.  The  first  was  Lake  Baikal,  about  two-thirds  of 
the  way  across  Siberia.  It  is  the  largest  body  of  fresh  water 
in  the  eastern  hemisphere  except  the  Victoria  Nyanza,  in 
Africa.  It  lies  1,561  feet  above  sea-level,  is  40  miles  wide, 
400  miles  long,  and  3,185  feet  deep.  The  surface  is  frozen  to 
a  depth  of  about  nine  feet  five  months  in  the  year,  and  the  ice 
breaks  into  fissures  and  piles  into  hummocks  and  windrows 
that  prevent  easy  and  safe  passage  on  sledges.  The  Rus- 
sians temporarily  solved  this  problem  by  using  heavy  ferry- 
steamers  which  were  kept  running  in  winter  as  ice-breakers. 
But  as  soon  as  practicable,  the  railway-line  was  carried 
around  the  lake.  This  involved  a  de*tour  of  200  miles 
through  a  mountainous  region,  which  presented  serious  en- 
gineering difficulties.  No  less  than  thirty-three  tunnels 
were  required.  But  the  Russians  persevered  and  the  devour 
was  completed  in  1904. 

The  political  obstacle  was  near  the  eastern  end,  where 
Chinese  Manchuria  projects  northward  so  far  as  to  necessi- 

1  Russia  in  Transformation,  pp.  135-164. 
127 


128  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

tate  another  long  detour  and  to  interpose  an  extensive  alien 
territory  between  the  Trans-Baikal  region  and  the  ter- 
minus of  the  railway  at  Vladivostok.  This  difficulty  was 
eliminated  by  an  "agreement,"  September  6,  1896,  through 
the  Russo-Chinese  Bank  in  Peking,  in  which  China  was 
"persuaded"  to  permit  the  construction  of  the  railway 
"under  joint  control,"  south  of  the  Amur  River.  This  con- 
cession made  Russian  influence  paramount  in  an  immense 
area  to  the  southward  and  enabled  the  Russians  in  the  fol- 
lowing year  to  begin  the  development  of  a  squalid  settle- 
ment on  the  Sungari  River  into  the  important  city  of  Har- 
bin in  the  centre  of  one  of  the  most  productive  wheat  and 
grazing  regions  in  the  world.  A  concession  obtained  in 
March,  1898,  enabled  Russia  to  build  a  branch  line  from 
Harbin  southward  to  Port  Arthur.  That  this  desirable  ter- 
ritory was  considered  a  Russian  preserve  soon  appeared 
in  a  proposal  which  M.  Plangon,  Russian  Charge  d' Affaires 
at  Peking,  presented  to  the  Chinese  Government,  one 
clause  of  which  reads:  "That  the  Chinese  Government  will 
not  make  any  decision  with  regard  to  the  opening  to  foreign 
trade  of  any  new  treaty  ports  in  Manchuria  and  the  estab- 
lishment of  foreign  consuls  there,  without  previous  con- 
sultation with  the  Imperial  Government." 

Vladivostok,  while  a  position  of  great  natural  strength, 
and  with  a  fine  harbor  in  summer,  is  closed  by  ice  six 
months  in  the  year.  Moreover,  it  is  not  upon  the  open 
Pacific  but  upon  the  Japan  Sea,  from  which  there  are  only 
three  outlets:  La  Pe*rouse  (or  Soya)  Strait,  about  five  hun- 
dred miles  northeast;  Tsugaru  Strait,  four  hundred  and 
twenty-four  miles  east;  and  Korea  Strait,  nearly  six  hun- 
dred miles  south.  The  first  is  a  far-northern  wintry  passage 
between  Saghalien  and  the  Japanese  Yezo;  the  second  is  a 
narrow  channel  between  the  two  largest  islands  of  Japan, 
Hondo  and  Yezo;  and  the  latter,  although  one  hundred 
and  twenty  miles  wide,  is  bordered  on  one  side  by  Japan, 
and  is  cut  in  two  by  the  Japanese  island  of  Tsushima.  In 
other  words,  the  Japan  Sea  is  literally  Japan's  sea.  and  it 
would  be  difficult  for  a  fleet  of  any  other  nation  to  get  in 


129 

or  out  of  it  without  her  consent,  as  a  Russian  admiral  after- 
ward learned  to  his  sorrow.  The  later  annexation  of  Korea 
locked  a  door  which  already  was  shut. 

Naturally,  therefore,  Russia  began  to  press  her  way 
southward  through  Manchuria,  that  great  province  of 
China  whose  southern  end  is  washed  by  the  Yellow  Sea. 
China's  resistance  was  no  match  for  Russian  diplomacy, 
and  rapid  progress  was  being  made  when  the  China-Japan 
War  broke  out,  in  1894.  I  have  discussed  this  war  in  an- 
other chapter.  Suffice  it  here  that  the  Japanese  made 
short  work  of  the  Chinese,  and  in  November,  after  a  brilliant 
campaign,  they  captured  Port  Arthur,  which  had  been  a 
squalid  fishing-village  until  Li  Hung  Chang,  then  Viceroy 
of  Chih-li,  had  fortified  it  on  the  advice  of  German  engineers, 
who  discerned  its  strategic  value.  April  17,  1895,  the 
treaty  of  peace  was  signed  at  Shimonoseki.  This  treaty 
stipulated  among  other  things  that  Korea  should  be  abso- 
lutely independent,  but  that  the  Liao-tung  peninsula,  as 
well  as  Formosa  and  the  Pescadores,  should  be  ceded  to 
Japan,  and  an  indemnity  of  two  hundred  million  taels  paid. 
Ostensibly  in  the  interest  of  the  integrity  of  China,  but 
really  in  the  interests  of  her  own  ambition,  Russia  per- 
suaded France  and  Germany  to  join  her  in  notifying  the 
Japanese  Government,  April  23,  that  "it  would  not  be  per- 
mitted to  retain  permanent  possession  of  any  portion  of  the 
mainland  of  Asia." 

The  solicitude  of  the  Russians  for  the  integrity  of  China 
was  touching,  but  it  did  not  prevent  them  from  making  one 
encroachment  after  another  upon  the  coveted  territory. 
The  treaty  of  St.  Petersburg,  December  26,  1896,  gave  the 
Eastern  Chinese  Railroad  Company,  whose  stock  could  be 
held  only  by  Russians  and  Chinese,  the  right  to  construct 
a  line  through  Manchuria,  to  develop  mines,  to  promote 
all  other  commercial  enterprises,  and  to  station  troops  in 
Manchuria  "to  protect  the  railroad."  This  virtually  made 
Manchuria  a  Russian  province.1 

March  8,  1898,  Russia  threw  off  all  disguise  and  peremp- 

1  Cf.  Alfred  Rambaud's  The  Case  of  Russia,  pp.  1-135. 


130  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

torily  demanded  from  China  a  lease  of  the  Liao-tung  penin- 
sula, including  Port  Arthur  and  800  square  miles  of  adjoin- 
ing territory.  The  Chinese  helplessly  yielded,  and  March 
27,  the  humiliating  lease  was  signed.  Grim  significance  was 
given  to  Russia's  action  by  the  prompt  appearance  at  Port 
Arthur  of  20,000  soldiers  and  90,000  Chinese  coolies,  who 
were  set  to  work  developing  a  great  modern  fortification. 
The  term  of  the  lease  was  twenty-five  years,  but  he  must 
have  been  a  very  unsophisticated  observer  who  imagined 
that  such  enormous  expenditures  with  such  interests  at 
stake  would  be  voluntarily  abandoned  at  the  expiration  of 
so  brief  a  period. 

The  harbor  of  Port  Arthur  is  hardly  large  enough  for 
naval  purposes,  and  quite  inadequate  for  commercial  use. 
The  Russians  did  not  wish,  anyway,  to  make  their  fortress 
accessible  to  the  rest  of  the  world.  The  treaty  of  March 
27,  1898,  under  which  Russia  acquired  possession  of  Port 
Arthur  and  Talien-wan,  stipulated  that  "all  land  held 
by  Chinese  within  such  limits,  as  well  as  the  adjacent 
waters,  shall  be  held  by  Russia  alone  on  lease.  .  .  .  Port 
Arthur  shall  be  a  naval  base  for  the  sole  use  of  Russian  and 
Chinese  men-of-war,  and  be  considered  as  an  unopened 
port  so  far  as  the  naval  and  mercantile  vessels  of  other  na- 
tions are  concerned."  So  the  Russians  decided  to  build  a 
commercial  city  thirty-three  miles  northeast  of  Port  Arthur 
and  to  call  it  Dalny,  which  quite  appropriately  means  "  far 
away."  Most  cities  grow,  but  the  Russians  could  not 
afford  to  wait  for  so  slow  a  method,  and  a  metropolis  was 
made  to  order  as  a  result  of  an  edict  issued  by  the  Czar, 
July  30,  1899. 

The  harbor  at  Dalny  is  a  fine  one,  with  thirty  feet  of 
water  at  low  tide,  so  that  large  vessels  can  lie  along  the 
docks  and  transfer  their  cargoes  directly  to  trains  for 
Europe.  The  boom  cities  of  the  American  West  yielded 
the  palm  to  this  boom  city  of  the  Far  East.  In  1899  there 
was  practically  nothing  at  Dalny  but  a  wretched  Chinese 
village.  By  1903  great  piers  had  been  constructed;  enor- 
mous warehouses  and  elevators  erected;  gas,  electric  light, 


RUSSIA'S  EFFORT  TO  OBTAIN  KOREA  131 

water  and  street-car  plants  installed ;  wide  and  well-sewered 
streets  laid  out;  and  a  thoroughly  modern  and  handsome 
city  planned  in  four  sections,  the  first  of  which  was  admin- 
istrative, the  second  mercantile,  the  third  residential,  and 
the  fourth  Chinese.  Neither  labor  nor  expense  was  spared 
in  the  construction  of  this  ambitious  city,  which  within  four 
years  had  a  population  of  50,000  and  represented  an  ex- 
penditure of  $150,000,000. 

The  edict  of  the  Czar  promised  that  Dalny  was  to  enjoy 
"the  rights  of  free  trade  which  belong  to  free  ports"  upon 
certain  "conditions."  But  the  history  of  Russia's  dealings 
with  outsiders  makes  it  not  uncharitable  to  suspect  that 
the  port  would  have  been  really  free  only  so  far  as  the  in- 
terests of  the  Trans-Siberian  Railway  might  require  and 
that  the  line  of  freedom  would  have  been  so  closely  drawn 
at  the  city  limits  that  the  vaunted  liberty  would  not  be 
worth  much  to  any  but  Russian  subjects.  Russian  policy 
in  Asia  was  not  philanthropic. 

It  has  been  alleged  that  the  Chinese  benefited  from  Rus- 
sian occupation,  but  in  1903  M.  Gerrare  wrote:  "It  is  true 
that  some  thousands  of  coolies  from  Chefoo  have  found 
occasional  remunerative  employment  in  constructing  rail- 
ways, building  forts,  barracks,  and  houses;  but  these  are 
not  resident,  are  no  more  part  of  the  population  of  Man- 
churia, and  the  purchasing  power  of  the  people  has  not  been 
greatly  increased  by  the  money  Russia  has  expended  there. 
Manchuria  has  the  railway,  but  enormous  tracts  of  fertile 
land  have  been  thrown  out  of  cultivation;  thriving  towns 
and  villages  too  numerous  to  count  have  disappeared  en- 
tirely; the  junks  are  off  the  rivers,  trade  is  at  a  standstill, 
industry  is  dead,  the  robber  bands  have  increased  in  num- 
ber and  infest  the  countryside  so  that  travel  into  the  wilder 
parts  is  no  safer  than  it  was  previous  to  the  imposition  of 
the  Russian  regime." 

The  confusion  caused  by  the  Boxer  uprising  of  1900  af- 
forded Russia  a  pretext  for  further  aggressions.  Asserting, 
and  with  reason,  that  foreign  interests  in  Manchuria  were 
imperilled,  Russia  sent  troops  into  New-chwang  and  vir- 


132 

tually  assumed  the  government  of  all  Manchuria.  In  a 
treaty  with  China,  signed  April  8,  1902,  Russia  solemnly 
agreed  to  evacuate  Manchuria,  except  the  leased  Liao-tung 
peninsula,  by  October  8,  1903.  The  agreement  was  charm- 
ing in  graciousness,  the  first  of  the  four  articles  reading: 
"His  Majesty  the  Emperor  of  all  the  Russias,  desiring  to 
give  fresh  proof  of  his  love  of  peace  and  his  sentiments  of 
friendship  for  His  Majesty  the  Emperor  of  China,  not- 
withstanding the  fact  that  the  first  attacks  upon  the  peace- 
able Russian  population  were  made  from  various  points  in 
Manchuria,  which  is  situated  on  the  frontier,  consents  to 
the  re-establishment  of  the  authority  of  the  Chinese  Govern- 
ment in  the  aforesaid  province,  and  restores  to  the  Chinese 
Government  the  right  to  exercise  governmental  and  admin- 
istrative powers  there  as  before  its  occupation  by  the  Rus- 
sian troops."  The  other  articles  provided  for  the  necessary 
details,  and  everything  appeared  delightfully  satisfactory. 
October  8,  1903,  came  and  went,  however,  but  Russia  re- 
mained. Expostulations  were  met  with  evasive  replies 
and  specious  excuses,  and  the  world  soon  realized  that 
Russia  did  not  have  the  slightest  intention  of  abandoning 
the  vantage-ground  that  she  had  won.  Russia  had  reached 
the  open  Pacific  Ocean,  and  she  proposed  to  stay  there. 

The  Russians  were  not  satisfied  with  their  gains  in  Man- 
churia, and  for  several  reasons  which  they  deemed  con- 
vincing. 

The  tiny  basin  at  Port  Arthur  and  the  fair-sized  harbor 
at  Dalny  were  not  deemed  adequate  to  the  needs  of  a  great 
nation  which  had  large  ambitions  in  the  north  Pacific  seas. 
Moreover,  the  Russians  soon  found  that  when  the  wind 
was  from  the  southeast  the  harbor  of  Dalny  did  not  afford 
safe  anchorage.  So  at  vast  expense  they  constructed  a 
breakwater.  This  gave  needed  protection,  although  the 
quieter  water  came  so  near  freezing  several  times  as  to 
cause  uneasiness.  Additional  port  facilities  were  desirable, 
and  the  Russians  began  to  seek  them  with  greater  deter- 
mination. 

Where  else  could  they  look  ?    Manifestly  not  on  the  China 


RUSSIA'S  EFFORT  TO  OBTAIN  KOREA  133 

side,  for  the  next  harbor  in  that  direction  is  New-chwang, 
which  is  ice-bound  in  the  winter.  Beyond  that  is  the  im- 
perial province  of  Chih-li.  China,  of  course,  could  not 
yield  that,  nor  does  it  contain  a  harbor  worthy  of  the  name, 
Taku  being  only  a  shallow  and  dangerous  roadstead.  In- 
deed, there  is  no  good  harbor  on  that  side  until  Chefoo  is 
reached,  and  Germany  had  already  pre-empted  that. 
Plainly,  no  other  harbors  westward  could  be  acquired  with- 
out danger  of  international  complications.  Europe  acqui- 
esced in  Russia's  possession  of  the  Liao-tung  peninsula,  but 
any  approach  toward  the  capital  of  China  would  be  another 
matter  and  would  involve  collision  with  the  conflicting  am- 
bitions of  other  Western  Powers. 

There  was  but  one  place  to  which  the  Russians  could 
turn,  and  that  was  southward,  where  lay  the  spacious  and 
admirably  located  harbors  of  Korea,  admirably  adapted  to 
Russia's  ambitions. 

Russia  felt,  too,  that  Korea  was  essential  to  her  for  other 
reasons.  It  borders  the  Manchurian  frontier  for  about 
five  hundred  miles.  Control  of  the  Korean  side  of  that 
frontier  was  therefore  necessary  to  Russia's  security  hi 
Manchuria,  since  a  hostile  Power  in  Korea  could  easily  cross 
the  border  and  break  the  north-and-south  lines  of  communi- 
cation. Moreover,  the  Korean  peninsula  lay  between  the 
two  Russian  fortifications  of  Vladivostok  and  Port  Arthur, 
and  dominated  their  connection  by  water.  As  Manchuria 
still  nominally  belonged  to  the  Chinese  Empire,  and  was 
only  held  by  Russia  under  a  lease  about  whose  terms  there 
was  constant  dispute,  Russia  naturally  coveted  possession 
of  the  intervening  peninsula  so  that  there  would  be  unob- 
structed communication  between  her  two  naval  bases. 
The  Russians  therefore  deemed  Korea  indispensable  to 
their  naval  and  commercial  purposes  in  the  north  Pacific 
and  to  the  protection  of  their  interests  in  Manchuria.  The 
undertaking  looked  temptingly  easy.  It  was  clear  to  Rus- 
sia as  to  the  rest  of  the  world  that  Korea  was  too  small  and 
weak  and  too  hopelessly  degenerate  to  maintain  its  inde- 
pendence and  that  it  was  destined,  sooner  or  later,  to 


134  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

fall  into  the  hands  of  some  other  Power.  Russia  felt 
that  her  need  of  it  was  paramount,  and  that  it  was  desir- 
able to  obtain  possession  before  some  rival  secured  the 
prize. 

For  these  reasons  Russia  began  to  make  systematic 
"diplomatic"  approaches  toward  Korea.  In  1859  they  had 
tried  to  obtain  a  foothold  upon  the  important  island  of 
Tsushima,  which  commands  the  Korea  Strait.  They  were 
making  good  progress,  erecting  barracks  and  laying  out 
plantations,  when  a  British  fleet,  commanded  by  Sir  James 
Hope,  put  in  an  appearance,  and  the  Russians  were  obliged 
to  abandon  their  project.  They  now  inaugurated  system- 
atic plans  for  the  control  of  the  mainland. 

An  agreement  between  the  Russian  and  Japanese  Minis- 
ters in  Seoul,  May  14,  1896,  regarding  the  number  and  dis- 
position of  Japanese  troops  in  Korea,  was  followed  by  the 
Yamagata-Lobanoff  protocol,  signed  at  St.  Petersburg 
June  9,  of  the  same  year,  which  provided  that  "  if ,  as  a  re- 
sult of  reforms  which  should  be  considered  indispensable, 
it  should  become  necessary  to  have  recourse  to  foreign 
debts,  the  two  governments  should  of  a  common  accord 
render  their  support  to  Korea";  and  that  "the  Japanese 
and  Russian  Governments  should  try  to  abandon  to  Korea, 
in  so  far  as  the  financial  and  economic  situation  of  that 
country  should  permit,  the  creation  and  maintenance  of  an 
armed  force  and  of  a  police  organized  of  native  subjects, 
in  proportion  sufficient  to  maintain  internal  order,  without 
foreign  aid." 

This  protocol  proved  to  be  no  deterrent  to  the  Slav,  for 
the  ink  was  hardly  dry  upon  the  signatures  when  the  Rus- 
sian Minister  in  Seoul  tried  to  have  the  Korean  army  placed 
under  Russian  officers,  and  a  little  later  he  sought  to  gain 
control  of  the  revenues  of  the  country  by  having  the  Rus- 
sian M.  Kir  Alexeieff  substituted  for  the  British  Mr.  J. 
McLeavy  Brown  as  financial  adviser  and  general  director 
of  customs.  He  succeeded  in  getting  an  order  for  Brown's 
dismissal,  but  the  doughty  Irishman  refused  to  recognize  it, 


RUSSIA'S  EFFORT  TO  OBTAIN  KOREA  135 

and  was  presently  reinstated  in  his  position,  which,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  he  had  not  relinquished.1 

April  25,  1898,  as  a  salve  to  the  wounded  feelings  of  the 
Japanese  and  in  order  to  leave  herself  free  to  consolidate 
her  power  in  Manchuria,  Russia  entered  into  an  agree- 
ment with  Japan  by  which  each  Power  promised  to  respect 
the  integrity  of  Korea  and  not  to  maintain  there  more  than 
800  soldiers.  This  was  followed,  August  25,  by  the  Nishi- 
Rosen  protocol,  which  provided  in  Article  I  that  "the 
Imperial  Governments  of  Japan  and  Russia  definitely 
recognize  the  sovereignty  and  entire  independence  of  Korea, 
and  mutually  engage  to  abstain  from  all  direct  interference 
in  the  affairs  of  that  country";  and  in  Article  III  that  "in 
view  of  the  great  development  of  the  commercial  and  in- 
dustrial enterprise  of  Japan  in  Korea,  as  also  the  consider- 
able number  of  Japanese  subjects  residing  in  that  country, 
the  Russian  Imperial  Government  shall  not  impede  the 
development  of  commercial  and  industrial  relations  be- 
tween Japan  and  Korea." 

These  agreements  prevented  Russia  from  adopting  a 
policy  of  open  aggression  in  Korea.  However,  a  little 
matter  like  a  solemn  promise  did  not  hinder  the  Russian 
Government  where  its  interests  were  involved.  At  this 
point  the  friendship  of  France  came  in  handy.  France  had 
no  independent  ambitions  in  Korea,  but  she  was  in  close 
league  with  Russia,  with  substantial  benefits  in  mind  both 
in  Europe  and  Asia.  Russia  now  endeavored  to  obtain 
through  her  ally  what  she  could  not  directly  obtain  without 
open  rupture  with  Japan.  Frenchmen  were  placed  in  all 
possible  official  positions  in  Korea,  and  as  the  Emperor 
was  controlled  by  the  Franco-Russian  party,  the  Russians 
secured  in  this  way  a  number  of  substantial  advantages. 

This  scheme  proved  to  be  helpful  in  furthering  Russia's 
desire  to  secure  an  entrance  to  Korea  by  railway.  July  4, 
1896,  a  French  company  had  obtained  a  concession  to  con- 

1  Cf.  Hershey's  International  Law  and  Diplomacy  of  the  Russo-Chinese  War, 
pp.  45  seq. 


136  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

struct  a  line  from  Wiju,  on  the  Yalu  River,  to  Seoul.  The 
company  failed  to  carry  out  its  contract  to  begin  work 
within  the  period  specified,  and  in  June,  1899,  waived  its 
rights  on  condition  that  the  Korean  Government  should 
build  the  road  and  use  only  French  engineers  and  materials. 
Everybody  knew  that  the  ruler  of  Korea  had  neither  the 
inclination  nor  the  money  to  build  railroads,  that  Russia 
was  behind  this  plan,  and  that  Russian  funds  would  enable 
him  to  execute  them  unless  it  should  finally  become  prac- 
ticable for  the  French  to  build  the  road.  It  was  significant, 
at  any  rate,  that  the  French  Minister  looked  after  the  sur- 
veys. Wiju  being  on  the  border  of  Manchuria,  Russia 
would  have  in  this  line  direct  entrance  to  Seoul  from  the 
north,  and  could  get  her  troops  easily  and  quickly  into  the 
capital. 

At  one  important  point,  however,  an  obstacle  was  en- 
countered. As  inspector-general  of  maritime  customs,  Mr. 
McLeavy  Brown,  was  the  virtual  manager  of  the  revenues 
of  Korea.  Continued  efforts  were  made  to  replace  him 
with  a  man  who  would  be  friendly  to  Russian  interests, 
and  would  not  object  to  the  proposal  to  relieve  the  monetary 
embarrassment  of  the  Emperor  by  a  French  loan  of  five 
million  yen,  to  be  secured  and  repaid  by  the  sympathetically 
managed  customs.  The  Korean  officials  were  more  than 
willing  to  have  a  customs  inspector  who  would  be  willing 
to  give  them  an  opportunity  to  peculate.  But  the  British 
and  American  legations  promptly  and  significantly  advised 
the  government  that  the  dismissal  of  the  incorruptible 
Brown  would  not  inure  to  the  advantage  of  Korea,  and 
they  so  vigorously  protested  against  the  virtual  mortgaging 
of  the  empire  to  France  and  Russia  that,  although  the  pa- 
pers had  actually  been  signed,  the  deal  was  quietly  dropped. 

It  was  generally  believed  that  the  Franco-Russian 
schemes  were  materially  aided  by  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  in  Korea.  It  was  then  represented  by  a  bishop, 
thirty-nine  priests,  and  twenty-four  unordained  workers, 
all  French,  and  under  La  Society  des  Missions  Etrangeres 
of  Paris.  The  cathedral  in  Seoul  is  one  of  the  most  stately 


RUSSIA'S  EFFORT  TO  OBTAIN  KOREA  137 

buildings  in  the  capital,  and  scattered  over  the  country 
were  numerous  churches  and  sixty-one  schools  of  various 
grades.  The  relations  between  the  French  Mission  and  the 
French  political  plans  were  very  close,  as  they  usually  were 
in  Asia  and  Africa,  and  the  legation  and  the  missionaries 
worked  together  so  openly  that  the  priests  were  commonly 
regarded  as  quasi-political  emissaries. 

A  more  direct  effort  was  made  through  a  Korean  woman. 
By  that  combination  of  flattery  and  adroitness  in  which 
Russians  were  adepts,  they  cast  the  spell  of  their  influence 
over  the  Queen,  a  woman  of  considerable  ability  and  the 
most  aggressive  factor  in  court  circles.  If  it  be  thought 
strange  that  she  should  have  allowed  herself  to  be  made 
the  tool  of  the  Russians,  it  must  be  remembered  that  she 
could  not  see  all  the  ulterior  purposes  of  Russian  domina- 
tion, and  that  the  Russians  were  so  skilful  in  their  manage- 
ment of  Asiatic  peoples  that  they  usually  succeeded  in  mak- 
ing themselves  more  popular  than  their  rivals.  At  any 
rate,  the  ablest  woman  in  Korea  became  the  friend  of 
Russia  against  the  Japanese.  Something  of  a  diplomat 
herself,  and  aided  by  the  astute  counsel  of  the  Russian 
Minister,  matters  began  to  go  Russia's  way. 

Meanwhile  the  Japanese  were  not  inactive.  They  had 
waged  a  war  for  the  integrity  of  Korea,  and  after  their  vic- 
tory they  had  solemnly  proclaimed  its  independence.  But 
they  felt  that  then*  interests  there  were  greater  than  those 
of  other  nations,  and  they  were  not  disposed  to  acquiesce  in 
Russia's  schemes.  The  war  had  given  them  the  upper  hand 
and  they  proposed  to  keep  it.  They  officered  and  drilled 
Korean  troops,  filled  public  posts  with  their  own  men,  and 
vigorously  pushed  then*  own  plans.  Finding  that  the 
Queen  was  hindering  their  efforts,  and  furious  over  the  ad- 
vantage which  their  foes  were  thus  obtaining,  the  Japanese 
began  to  plot  with  her  bitterest  enemy,  the  Tai-wen-kun, 
father  of  the  King;  and  October  8,  1895,  they  committed 
the  blunder  as  well  as  the  crime  of  assassinating  the  Queen. 

Not  satisfied  with  the  death  of  the  Queen,  the  insatiable 
Tai-wen-kun  caused  a  royal  edict  to  be  drafted  defaming  her 


138  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

memory,  stripping  her  of  royal  prerogatives,  and  degrad- 
ing her  to  the  humblest  rank  of  subjects — a  punishment 
which  Orientals  deem  the  depth  of  infamy.  This  insult  to 
the  dead  concluded  as  follows:  "We  have  endeavored  to 
discover  her  whereabouts,  but  as  she  does  not  come  forth 
and  appear,  We  are  convinced  that  she  is  not  only  unfitted 
and  unworthy  of  the  Queen's  rank  but  also  that  her  guilt 
is  excessive  and  brimful.  Therefore  with  her  We  may  not 
succeed  to  the  glory  of  the  Royal  Ancestry.  So  we  hereby 
depose  her  from  the  rank  of  Queen  and  reduce  her  to  the 
level  of  the  lowest  class."  Broken,  humiliated,  and  terrified 
as  the  King  was,  this  was  too  much.  He  flatly  refused  to 
sign  the  edict,  exclaiming  that  he  would  rather  have  his 
hands  cut  off.  But  the  Tai-wen-kun  was  not  to  be  thwarted, 
and  the  edict  was  published  over  the  signatures  of  the 
Prime  Minister  and  eight  other  members  of  the  Cabinet. 

There  is  a  sharp  controversy  as  to  whether  the  Japanese 
authorities  were  really  responsible  for  the  murder  of  the 
Queen.  Professor  George  T.  Ladd,  who  vigorously  de- 
fends them,  says:  "The  Japanese  Home  Government  was 
not  responsible  for  the  murder  of  the  Korean  Queen.  It  is 
true  that  General  Miura  and  the  Japanese  Soshi  were  im- 
plicated and  co-operated  in  the  murder  of  the  Queen,  but 
she  was  one  of  the  most  cruel  and  corrupt  women  that  ever 
lived.  During  her  time,  according  to  the  estimate — I  do 
not  know  how  true — of  one  of  the  Korean  bank  officials, 
she  had  2,857  people  put  to  death  at  her  own  personal 
caprice.  If  the  Emperor  looked  on  any  girl  or  woman  in 
the  palace,  the  Queen  had  her  eyes  torn  out;  and  if  the 
Emperor  went  further,  she  had  her  heart  torn  out.  She 
festooned  one  of  the  gates  once  with  the  heads  of  some 
thirty  friends  of  the  Emperor's  father,  the  Tai-wen-kun. 
.  .  .  Nevertheless,  the  murder  of  the  Queen  was  wrong, 
and  Mr.  Uchida,  later  consul-general  in  New  York,  who 
was  consul  in  Chemulpo  at  the  time,  got  word  that  the 
murder  was  to  take  place,  and  he  wired  to  Tokyo  to  prevent 
it,  but  too  late."1 

1  With  Marquis  Ito  in  Korea,  p.  7. 


RUSSIA'S  EFFORT  TO  OBTAIN  KOREA  139 

The  cruelties  perpetrated  by  the  Queen  are  not  to  be 
condoned,  but  they  are  irrelevant  because  they  were  not 
the  cause  of  the  assassination.  Such  atrocities  are  unhap- 
pily common  among  Oriental  despots,  who  think  no  more 
of  decapitating  a  subject  whom  they  fear  or  dislike  than 
an  American  would  think  of  drowning  a  cat.  The  Japanese 
did  not  care  how  many  Koreans  the  Queen  executed,  and 
the  Tai-wen-kun,  whose  career  had  been  far  more  brutal 
and  bloody  than  that  of  the  Queen,  was  in  no  danger  from 
them.  The  murder  of  the  Queen  caused  such  a  storm  of 
indignation,  and  the  blow  to  Japanese  prestige  proved  to 
be  so  serious,  that  a  court  of  inquiry  was  convened  at  Hiro- 
shima. Whatever  may  be  the  technical  accuracy  of  the 
statement  that  "the  Japanese  Home  Government  was  not 
responsible  for  the  murder  of  the  Korean  Queen,"  the  official 
decision  handed  down  by  the  Japanese  court  is  significant 
reading,  as  the  following  extracts  show: 

"  The  accused  Miura  Gow  assumed  his  official  duties  .  .  . 
on  September  1,  1895.  According  to  his  observation, 
things  in  Korea  were  tending  in  the  wrong  direction,  the 
court  was  daily  growing  more  and  more  arbitrary,  and  at- 
tempting wanton  interference  with  the  conduct  of  State 
affairs."  Reference  is  then  made  to  several  conferences 
with  the  Tai-wen-kun  and  Japanese  officials,  one  of  which 
was  held  October  3.  "The  decision  arrived  at  on  that 
occasion  was  that  assistance  should  be  rendered  to  the 
Tai-wen-kun's  entry  into  the  palace.  ...  It  was  further 
resolved  that  this  opportunity  should  be  availed  of  for 
taking  the  life  of  the  Queen,  who  exercised  overwhelming 
influence  in  the  Court.  .  .  .  Miura  told  them  (the  escort 
of  the  Tai-wen-kun)  that  on  the  success  of  the  enterprise 
depended  the  eradication  of  the  evils  that  had  done  so 
much  mischief  to  the  Kingdom  for  the  past  twenty  years, 
and  instigated  them  to  despatch  the  Queen  when  they 
entered  the  palace.  .  .  .  About  dawn,  the  whole  party 
entered  the  palace  through  the  Kwang-hwa  gate,  and  at 
once  proceeded  to  the  inner  chambers.  Notwithstanding 
these  facts,  there  is  no  sufficient  evidence  to  prove  that  any 


140  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

of  the  accused  actually  committed  the  crime  originally 
meditated  by  them.  .  .  .  For  these  reasons,  the  accused, 
each  and  all,  are  hereby  discharged." 

A  more  naive  conclusion  it  would  be  difficult  to  imagine. 
The  fact  of  conspiracy  to  assassinate  the  Queen  was  estab- 
lished; the  Queen  was  assassinated  as  the  deliberately 
planned  result  of  the  conspiracy;  but  the  conspirators, 
who  "proceeded  to  the  inner  chambers"  "to  despatch  the 
Queen"  were  "discharged"! 

A  reign  of  terror  followed.  The  panic-stricken  King  be- 
came abjectly  helpless  in  the  hands  of  the  Japanese  party, 
and  they  proceeded  to  run  things  with  a  high  hand.  A 
party  of  Koreans  and  Russian  sympathizers  matured  a  plot 
for  the  rescue  of  the  King,  who  was  a  virtual  prisoner  in  his 
own  palace.  Spies  and  traitors  made  it  known,  and  the 
would-be  rescuers  were  met  by  soldiers  who  shot  them 
down  without  mercy.  At  the  request  of  the  American 
Minister,  two  missionaries,  the  Reverend  Horace  G.  Under- 
wood, D.D.,  and  0.  R.  Avison,  M.D.,  together  with  Mr. 
Homer  B.  Hulbert,  had  gone  to  the  palace  in  the  hope  that 
their  presence  with  the  King  would  protect  him  from  per- 
sonal violence  in  the  melee  that  was  expected  to  follow. 
His  Majesty  welcomed  them  with  pathetic  eagerness.  The 
missionaries  were  the  only  men  he  could  trust.  He  believed, 
too,  that  his  enemies  would  not  dare  to  molest  Americans, 
and  he  felt  safer  when  they  were  beside  him.  He  sat  close 
to  them  during  the  weary,  anxious  hours,  and  after  mid- 
night, when  the  sound  of  firing  had  died  away,  he  leaned 
his  head  upon  Doctor  Underwood's  shoulder,  and  the 
monarch  of  Korea  slept  the  sleep  of  exhaustion  hi  the  arms 
of  a  missionary. 

For  several  weeks  the  timid  King  besought  the  mission- 
aries to  spend  every  night  with  him,  and  after  they  ceased 
doing  so  the  royal  head  lay  down  to  fitful  slumber  and  un- 
pleasant dreams.  He  carefully  secluded  himself  by  day 
as  well  as  by  night  in  the  women's  apartments  of  the 
palace.  Even  there  he  was  not  free  from  espionage,  for 
his  enemies  kept  two  sharp-eyed  women,  one  of  them  the 


RUSSIA'S  EFFORT  TO  OBTAIN  KOREA  141 

wife  of  the  Tai-wen-kun,  to  take  turns  in  watching  him 
with  unceasing  vigilance.  After  four  months  of  this  hu- 
miliating bondage  the  unhappy  King  managed  to  effect  a 
coup  d'etat  which  had  startling  results.  In  the  small  hours 
of  the  morning  of  February  11,  1896,  when  the  King  and  the 
Crown  Prince  were  supposed  to  be  asleep  after  a  birthday 
feast  during  which  wine  had  freely  flowed,  and  the  watch- 
fulness of  the  duenna  guards  was  dulled  by  their  own  pota- 
tions, the  royal  pair  stole  softly  out,  entered  women's  chairs 
which  friends  had  secretly  provided  for  them,  passed  the 
sentinels  who  had  been  plied  with  liquor  to  lessen  their  sus- 
picions, and  were  swiftly  borne  to  the  Russian  legation ! 
The  Russian  Minister  received  the  fugitives  with  open  arms. 
That  he  had  known  of  their  coming  was  evidenced  by  the 
fact  that  he  had  brought  up  one  hundred  and  sixty  marines 
from  a  warship  at  Chemulpo,  and  had  made  other  suitable 
arrangements  for  his  expected  guests. 

From  the  safe  shelter  of  the  Russian  legation  the  royal 
fugitive  issued  two  characteristically  Oriental  proclama- 
tions: 

"  Alas  alas !  on  account  of  Our  unworthiness  and  mal-administra- 
tion  the  wicked  advanced  and  the  wise  retired.  Of  the  last  ten 
years,  none  has  passed  without  troubles.  Some  were  brought  on  by 
those  We  had  trusted  as  the  members  of  the  body,  while  others  by 
those  of  Our  own  bone  and  flesh.  Our  dynasty  of  five  centuries  has 
thereby  been  often  endangered  and  millions  of  Our  subjects  have 
thereby  been  gradually  impoverished.  These  facts  make  Us  blush 
and  sweat  for  shame.  But  these  troubles  have  been  brought  about 
through  Our  partiality  and  self-will,  giving  rise  to  rascality  and 
blunders  leading  to  calamities.  All  have  been  Our  own  fault  from  the 
first  to  the  last.  .  .  .  We  shall  endeavor  to  be  merciful.  No  pardon, 
however,  shall  be  extended  to  the  principal  traitors  concerned  in  the 
affairs  of  July,  1894,  and  of  October,  1895.  But  to  all  the  rest,  a 
general  amnesty  is  granted,  irrespective  of  the  degree  of  their  offenses. 
Reform  your  hearts;  ease  your  minds;  go  about  your  business,  public 
or  private,  as  in  times  past." 

The  King  remained  with  the  hospitable  Slav  for  a  year, 
and  the  seat  of  government  was  practically  transferred 
to  the  Russian  legation,  which  with  the  royal  person  in  its 


142  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

possession  was  not  slow  to  avail  itself  of  the  opportunity 
thus  afforded.  There  was,  indeed,  a  great  pretense  of 
delicacy  and  disinterestedness.  Indeed  it  should  be  said 
that  men  of  other  nationalities  in  Seoul  gave  the  Russian 
Minister  credit  for  modesty  and  forbearance,  and  even 
criticised  him  for  not  taking  fuller  advantage  of  his  oppor- 
tunity. However,  events  soon  showed  that  Russia  was 
not  losing  much.  The  grateful  monarch  was  easily  per- 
suaded to  agree  to  a  convention,  which  was  signed  in  Mos- 
cow, January  9,  1896,  recognizing  and  organizing  Russian 
interests  in  Korea.  This  was  followed  April  28,  1896,  and 
therefore  while  the  King  was  still  at  the  Russian  legation, 
by  a  concession  giving  a  Russian  company  the  monopoly 
for  twenty  years  of  the  lumber  region  in  the  Musan  district 
on  the  Tumen  River,  and  on  the  island  of  Uinung  in  the 
Japan  Sea.  The  concession  provided  that  the  King  should 
receive  a  royalty  of  twenty-five  per  cent  of  the  annual  profit 
and  that  at  any  time  within  five  years  after  the  work  had 
been  begun  the  company  might  cut  lumber  in  the  valley 
of  the  Yalu.  January  1,  1901,  this  time  limit  was  extended 
to  twenty  years. 

After  the  Emperor  returned  to  his  palace,  or  rather  to  a 
new  one,  for  a  Korean  ruler  will  not  live  in  a  palace  where 
the  death  of  his  predecessor  or  consort  has  occurred,  valu- 
able concessions  followed  rapidly.  The  Emperor  was  a 
chronic  bankrupt,  and  no  serious  difficulty  was  encountered 
in  inducing  him  to  exchange  privileges,  which  meant  noth- 
ing to  him,  for  Russian  gold.  A  concession  was  obtained  for 
mining  coal  in  Ham-gyongdo,  and  April  20, 1900,  for  whale- 
fishing  off  the  southern  coast.  With  the  utmost  suavity 
the  Russians  represented  the  need  of  some  place  on  shore 
where  the  oil  could  be  tried  out.  The  unsuspecting  Em- 
peror agreed.  But  since  whales  were  made,  no  such  build- 
ings had  been  erected  for  trying  out  oil,  and  it  soon  became 
apparent  that,  under  the  guise  of  that  innocent-looking 
concession,  the  Russian  bear  had  laid  a  massive  paw  on 
a  strategic  point  on  the  southern  end  of  the  peninsula. 

The  Russians   were  particularly   desirous  of   obtaining 


RUSSIA'S  EFFORT  TO  OBTAIN  KOREA  143 

Masampo.  The  bay  is  on  the  southern  end  of  the  penin- 
sula, opposite  the  Island  of  Koji,  which  protects  it  from 
the  outside.  It  is  a  good  harbor,  one  of  the  best  on  the 
north  Pacific  coast,  and  spacious  enough  to  accommodate 
a  whole  fleet.  Such  a  port  could  be  made  a  fortress  of  the 
first  magnitude,  and  would  give  to  its  possessor  the  com- 
mand of  all  southern  Korea  and  a  clear  passage  through 
the  Korea  Strait. 

In  May,  1899,  the  Korean  Government  was  induced  to 
make  Masampo  a  treaty  port.  As  foreigners  have  the 
right  to  purchase  land  within  a  radius  of  three  miles  from 
a  treaty  port,  the  Russian  Minister,  M.  Pavloff,  promptly 
appeared  on  the  ground,  staked  off  a  strategic  line  of  gen- 
erous proportions,  and  informed  the  local  magistrate  that 
the  Russians  would  take  it  for  a  dock  and  coaling  sheds  for 
a  Russian  steamship  company.  Imagining  himself  secure, 
he  sailed  for  home  on  furlough,  and  it  was  not  until  July 
that  M.  Stein,  of  the  legation  staff,  arrived  to  complete  the 
purchase.  To  his  consternation  he  found  that  the  Japa- 
nese had  already  bought  the  tract  direct  from  the  Korean 
owners.  A  stormy  time  followed.  The  Russian  lost  his 
temper  and  made  vehement  demands  upon  the  Korean 
Government  to  cancel  the  sale  and  let  the  Russians  have 
the  site.  But  the  government,  "advised"  by  the  Japanese, 
was  obliged  to  reply  that  it  could  not  interfere,  the  land 
having  been  purchased  from  its  owners  in  a  regular  way, 
and  in  accordance  with  law.  Demands  upon  the  Japanese 
Minister,  Mr.  Hayashi,  to  order  or  persuade  the  buyers  to 
sell  the  whole  or  at  least  a  part  of  the  tract  were  equally 
unavailing.  Then  bribery  and  threats  were  tried  with  the 
local  magistrates  at  Masampo ;  but  this  course  accomplished 
nothing  more  than  a  temporary  withholding  of  the  deeds. 
Furious  at  finding  all  other  means  futile,  the  Russian  Charge", 
September  14,  notified  the  Korean  Government  that  if  the 
Japanese  contract  was  not  cancelled,  the  Russian  Govern- 
ment might  be  obliged  to  take  steps  to  protect  its  interests. 
October  4  he  threatened  to  seize  the  desired  land.  The 
Korean  Government,  braced  by  the  Japanese  Minister,  re- 


144  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

maining  firm,  a  Russian  squadron  appeared  at  Chemulpo, 
March  16,  and  was  given  a  significantly  ostentatious  recep- 
tion by  M.  Pavloff,  who  by  this  time  had  returned  to  his 
post.  On  the  18th,  the  Korean  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs 
signed  a  lease  by  which  the  Russians  obtained  several  other 
tracts  of  land  at  Masampo.  The  Korean  Minister  also 
gave  a  pledge  that  the  island  of  Kojedo,  near  Masampo, 
should  not  be  alienated  to  others.  The  Russians  continued 
to  buy  every  available  spot  within  the  three-mile  limit,  and 
once  they  were  on  the  point  of  securing  a  large  tract  beyond 
it.  The  Japanese  promptly  and  vigorously  warned  the 
Korean  Government  that  this  would  not  be  tolerated,  and 
the  Russians  withdrew. 

In  May,  1900,  the  Russians  tried  to  lease  Tjapok  on  the 
inner  shore  of  Masampo;  but  again  finding  that  the  Japa- 
nese had  gotten  ahead  of  them,  they  leased  Pankumi  on 
the  outer  shore,  and  began  to  improve  it  as  a  base  for  the 
Russian  fleet.  Meantime,  the  Japanese  had  retained  the 
valuable  site  which  they  had  originally  secured  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1901,  and  had  added  to  it  several  other  tracts,  in- 
cluding one  of  forty  acres.1  Thus  the  Japanese  and  the 
Russians  were  face  to  face  at  this  important  port.  If  the 
Japanese  Minister,  Mr.  Hayashi,  had  not  been  so  alert  and 
determined,  Masampo  would  have  fallen  wholly  into  the 
hands  of  the  Russians,  and  would  have  been  made  a  forti- 
fication of  such  strength  as  to  give  Russia  control  of  southern 
Korea  and  the  command  of  Korea  Strait. 

Thwarted  in  the  south,  the  Russians  again  turned  their 
attention  to  the  north.  April  3,  1901,  the  Emperor  was 
induced  to  promise  that  he  would  not  grant  any  further 
mining  concessions  to  foreigners,  but  that  if  the  right  to 
operate  the  Korea  household  mines  were  given  to  any  for- 
eigner, it  should  be  to  a  Russian.  It  was  also  agreed  that 
if  any  foreign  capital  were  borrowed  for  the  construction 
of  the  railroad  from  Seoul  to  Wiju,  it  should  be  from 
Russia. 

The  timber  concession  in  the  Yalu  River  basin  provoked 

1  Cf.  Asakawa,  The  Russo-Japanese  Conflict,  pp.  274-277. 


RUSSIA'S  EFFORT  TO  OBTAIN  KOREA  145 

the  sharpest  controversy  and  did  much  to  intensify  the 
strain.  This  concession  had  been  almost  forgotten  in  the 
disputes  over  other  matters.  Only  a  few  trees  had  been 
felled  at  Musan,  and  almost  nothing  had  been  done  at 
Uinung.  But  it  now  became  apparent  that  the  innocent- 
looking  clause  conveying  the  optional  right  to  monopolize 
lumber  interests  in  the  valley  of  the  Yalu  was  a  prize  that 
the  Russians  were  not  overlooking.  April  13,  1903,  the 
Korean  Government  was  informed  that  the  company  would 
now  avail  itself  of  its  right  to  operate  on  the  Yalu,  and  that 
Baron  Gunzburg  would  represent  the  company  in  Seoul. 
What  that  meant  soon  became  clear.  The  unsophisticated 
ruler  thought  that  he  had  simply  granted  permission  to 
cut  trees  hi  the  lower  part  of  the  main  valley;  but  the  Rus- 
sians interpreted  "valley"  to  mean  all  the  vast  region 
drained  by  the  entire  river  and  all  its  tributaries,  a  region 
whose  immense  forests  were  worth  a  thousand  times  what 
the  wily  Russians  had  paid  for  the  concession,  to  say  noth- 
ing of  its  strategic  political  value.  The  Emperor  was  to 
receive  a  share  of  the  annual  profits  in  addition  to  the 
initial  payment,  but  it  was  only  a  paltry  share.  Japan 
protested  as  soon  as  this  precious  agreement  became  known; 
but  the  protest  was  unavailing.  The  Russians  had  been 
shrewd  enough  to  slip  into  the  concession  a  clause  that,  in 
the  event  of  dispute  as  to  the  meaning  of  the  concession, 
the  Russian  interpretation  should  prevail.  This  left  the 
Koreans  and  Japanese  absolutely  helpless. 

The  Russians  began  to  construct  military  roads  through- 
out the  territory,  thus  bringing  a  large  part  of  northern 
Korea  into  direct  connection  with  their  military  base  across 
the  frontier.  Under  the  pretext  of  protecting  the  property 
and  the  workmen  who  were  employed,  Russian  soldiers 
were  sent  across  the  Yalu.  The  harbor  of  Yongampo,  near 
the  mouth  of  the  river,  was  a  long  distance  from  Mt.  Paikma, 
where  the  timber  was  to  be  cut,  but  it  was  capable  of  being 
made  a  good  harbor.  It  controlled  the  valley  of  the  Yalu, 
and  it  might  be  made  a  point  of  junction  between  the  Trans- 
Siberian  Railway  and  the  Seoul-Wiju  line.  In  May  (1903), 


146  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

Russian  soldiers  in  civilian  dress  quietly  entered  Yongampo, 
with  a  large  number  of  Korean  and  Chinese  coolies,  and 
began  to  build  what  they  blandly  described  as  "timber 
warehouses."  There  were  indeed  warehouses,  but  they 
did  not  contain  timber.  An  American  who  visited  Yon- 
gampo  in  December  wrote  that  the  Russians  had  already 
erected  substantial  brick  buildings,  including  large  barracks 
and  stables;  that  a  breakwater  had  been  constructed — a 
very  creditable  performance  for  one  summer's  work;  that 
the  one  hundred  Russians,  with  one  or  two  exceptions,  were 
all  military  men;  that  they  made  no  secret  of  the  larger 
building  operations  which  were  contemplated  the  following 
spring;  and  that  everything  indicated  a  semipolitical  and 
semimilitary  permanent  occupation.  The  local  Koreans 
at  first  resented  the  coming  of  the  Russians,  but  abundant 
work  at  high  wages  soon  quieted  their  fears.  Of  course  it 
would  never  do  to  leave  such  "timber"  interests  unpro- 
tected, and  the  original  number  of  Russian  soldiers  was 
soon  increased  to  two  hundred,  while  at  Antung  and  other 
places  on  the  Chinese  side  of  the  Yalu  considerable  bodies 
of  Russian  troops  were  assembled. 

The  meaning  was  unmistakable.  Japan,  seeing  what 
was  going  on,  urged  the  Korean  Emperor  to  open  Yongampo 
as  a  treaty  port,  and  induced  Great  Britain  and  the  United 
States  to  join  in  the  request.  But  Russian  influence  with 
the  weak  and  corrupt  ruler  was  strong  enough  to  defeat  the 
effort. 

It  will  be  seen  from  all  this  how  persistently  Russia  pur- 
sued her  policy  to  entrench  herself  upon  an  unfrozen  sea, 
and  why  the  Russians  felt  that  they  could  not  yield  without 
sacrificing  interests  that  were  essential  to  their  purpose. 
Russia  moved  to  her  goal  as  steadily  as  a  glacier — huge, 
cold,  silent,  but  persistent.  British,  German,  French,  and 
American  policies  come  and  go ;  but  Russian  determination 
to  reach  the  open  ocean,  like  Tennyson's  "Brook,"  goes  "on 
forever."  For  a  long  period  the  rest  of  the  world  paid  little 
attention  to  the  Muscovite  Empire,  but  all  the  time  it  was 
quietly  encroaching  on  other  countries,  and  adding  one 


RUSSIA'S  EFFORT  TO  OBTAIN  KOREA  147 

region  after  another  to  its  already  vast  possessions.  There 
was  a  facination  almost  terrible  in  this  stealthy,  never-rest- 
ing, all-embracing  movement  upon  weaker  nations.  Against 
such  a  power  poor  Korea  was  utterly  helpless. 


CHAPTER  IX 
THE  RUSSIA-JAPAN  WAR 

THE  purposes  of  the  Slav  were  not  destined  to  develop 
further  without  challenge,  and  that  challenge  came  from 
Japan.  The  Japanese  were  spurred  on  both  by  resentment 
and  self-interest.  The  resentment  had  been  created  by 
the  Port  Arthur  incident  at  the  close  of  the  China-Japan 
War.  Li  Hung  Chang  is  alleged  to  have  written  in  his 
Memoirs,  shortly  after  the  peace  of  Shimonoseki  which 
concluded  the  China-Japan  War,  that  Count  Cassini  had 
informed  the  Chinese  Government  that  "Japan  will  not  be 
permitted,  either  now  or  in  the  future,  to  seize  upon  any 
part  of  Manchuria  or  the  mainland."  The  Memoirs  include 
many  things  that  the  editor  imagined  that  the  Viceroy 
might  or  should  have  said;  but  this  particular  saying  is 
quite  in  accord  with  the  known  attitude  of  the  Russian 
Government  at  the  time.  At  any  rate  Russia  ordered 
Japan  to  leave  the  Liao-tung  peninsula,  and  peremptorily 
demanded  a  favorable  response  within  forty-eight  hours. 
Mr.  Chester  Holcombe,  formerly  secretary  of  the  American 
legation  in  Peking,  was  in  Tokyo  at  the  time,  and  had  occa- 
sion to  call  upon  a  Cabinet  Minister.  "The  Japanese,  a 
friend  of  years'  standing,  gave  free  vent  to  his  feelings,  and 
shed  tears  like  a  child.  Said  he :  'If  we  only  had  three  battle- 
ships we  would  declare  war  against  Russia  within  twenty- 
four  hours.  We  have  but  one,  recently  captured  from 
China,  and  it  will  not  be  fit  for  service  within  six  months, 
while  the  Czar  has  six  here  in  our  harbors.  WTiat  can  we 
do  but  submit  to  this  insolent  threat?"  l 

From  that  day  Japan  applied  her  energies  to  creating  a 
modern  armament,  expending  tens  of  millions  on  cruisers, 
battleships,  and  torpedo-boats;  sending  her  brightest  men 

>  Article  "What  of  China?"  in  The  Outlook,  February  13,  1904. 

148 


THE  RUSSIA-JAPAN  WAR  149 

to  study  the  naval  system  of  England  and  the  military  sys- 
tem of  Germany;  buying  and  learning  to  manufacture  for 
herself  the  most  highly  improved  rifles  and  cannon;  drilling 
almost  literally  day  and  night,  and  fiercely  anticipating  the 
day  when  she  could  wreak  vengeance  on  the  treacherous 
Slav. 

The  Japanese  had  substantial  as  well  as  sentimental 
reasons  for  action.  They  wanted  Korea  themselves.  The 
territory  of  Japan  proper,  as  we  have  seen,  is  only  148,756 
square  miles  in  extent.  For  this  limited  territory  there  is 
a  population  of  317  to  the  square  mile.  Compare  this  with 
the  United  States,  which  has  28  to  the  square  mile,  and  then 
consider  that  a  large  part  of  Japan  is  not  adapted  to  agri- 
culture. If  the*  population  were  distributed  upon  the  till- 
able land  there  would  be  about  2,000  persons  to  each  square 
mile.  No  other  country  in  the  world  is  in  a  worse  predica- 
ment from  the  view-point  of  food-supply.  "Less  than  13,- 
000,000  acres  are  under  cultivation,  or  about  thirteen  per 
cent  of  the  extent  of  the  country,  while  the  arable  area 
cannot  possibly  be  increased  by  more  than  10,500,000  acres, 
so  that  the  per  capita  share  of  arable  land  is  less  than 
one-half  of  an  acre,  which  is  even  below  the  corresponding 
rate  in  England  and  less  than  one-half  of  that  in  China."  l 
The  Japanese  therefore  needed  room  for  colonization.  What 
more  natural  than  that  they  should  look  to  Korea,  which 
is  almost  within  sight  of  their  native  land?  A  Japanese 
writer  tersely  summarized  his  country's  position  by  saying 
that  the  people  of  Japan  "must  either  die  a  saintly  death 
in  righteous  starvation,  or  expand  into  the  neighbor's  back 
yard."  He  added:  "Japan  is  not  that  much  of  a  saint."  2 

A  steady  emigration  to  Korea  had  been  going  on  for  a 
considerable  period,  and  after  the  abrogation,  in  1902,  of 
the  Korean  law  requiring  passports  for  Japanese,  the  emi- 
gration greatly  increased.  Japanese  in  the  crowded  south- 
western part  of  the  islands  can  cross  the  Korea  Strait  easier 
and  cheaper  than  they  can  journey  to  northern  Japan  or 

1 K.  Asakawa,  The  Russo-Japanese  Conflict,  pp.  5-7. 
1  Adachi  Kinnosuke,  in  The  World's  Work,  April,  1909. 


150  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

Formosa.  Living  is  cheaper  than  in  Japan,  and  the  soil 
is  more  fertile.  It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that  there 
were  40,000  Japanese  in  Korea  prior  to  the  outbreak  of  the 
war.  By  1905,  65,000  had  arrived,  and  others  were  coming 
at  the  rate  of  about  200  a  day. 

This  emigration  created  a  Japanese  interest  in  Korea 
which  the  islanders  were  not  disposed  to  abandon  to  Rus- 
sians, who  would  be  hostile  to  it.  Unlike  the  Japanese 
emigrants  to  Manchuria  and  the  Hawaiian  Islands,  most  of 
whom  are  day-laborers,  a  large  proportion  of  the  Japanese 
in  Korea  were  traders  and  shopkeepers.  Many  became 
permanent  settlers  and  formed  stable  communities.  There 
were  Japanese  settlements  in  all  the  treaty  ports.  Most  of 
the  larger  towns  in  the  interior  also  had  Japanese  quarters, 
some  of  them  of  considerable  size,  and  with  their  own 
chambers  of  commerce,  public  schools,  courts  of  justice,  and 
police.  When  in  1906  the  Korea  Daily  News,  an  anti- 
Japanese  newspaper  edited  by  an  Englishman  in  Seoul, 
vehemently  protested  against  the  immigration  of  Japanese 
into  Korea,  the  Japanese  editor  of  the  Yorodzu  Ohoho,  of 
Tokyo,  caustically  replied:  "We  humbly  beg  the  Korea 
Daily  News  to  teach  us  how  to  dispose  of  our  surplus  mil- 
lions. Our  little  country  can  hardly  find  room  within  its 
narrow  boundary  to  accommodate  half  a  million  people  who 
increase  year  after  year.  Of  course  we  cannot  kill  them 
wholesale.  We  cannot  fill  up  the  Sea  of  Japan  to  create 
dry  land  and  settle  them  thereon.  We  would  like  to  go 
to  Kansas  or  anywhere  except  the  lower  world  where  we 
could  escape  starvation.  But  however  hospitable  America 
may  be,  she  refuses  to  receive  so  many  incomers  all  at  once. 
We  would  very  much  like  to  cross  over  to  Australia;  but 
it  is  white  men's  Australia,  and  although  that  continent  is 
many  times  larger  than  Korea  and  is  very  thinly  populated, 
no  colored  people  are  admitted  there.  We  know  Korea  is 
densely  populated,  but  there  the  least  resistance  is  offered 
and  so  we  go  there,  just  as  Englishmen  went  to  America  and 
Australia  and  elsewhere,  forcing  the  natives  to  make  room 
for  them  in  days  of  yore.  But  if  the  Korea  Daily  News  will 


THE  RUSSIA-JAPAN  WAR  151 

kindly  use  its  powerful  influence  in  our  favor  and  persuade 
the  Americans  and  Australians  to  receive  any  number  of  us, 
why,  we  should  leave  Korea  alone  and  emigrate  to  those 
lands  of  plenty  with  joy  in  our  hearts."1 

Commercially,  too,  the  Japanese  felt  that  they  needed 
Korea.  As  in  England,  increasing  population  and  inability 
to  increase  agriculture  turned  the  national  energies  to  manu- 
facturing. Raw  materials  and  markets,  therefore,  became 
questions  of  the  first  magnitude.  Korea  had  both.  Japan 
wanted  the  open  door  in  Korea;  Russia  would  close  it. 
This  was  vital,  for  Japan  depended  largely  on  Korea  for  the 
additional  food-supplies  that  she  needed.  Before  the  war 
Japan  drew  from  Korea  more  than  half  of  the  extra  wheat 
that  she  required,  nearly  half  of  her  importations  of  rice, 
and  large  quantities  of  beans  and  oil-cake.  In  return,  Ja- 
pan sold  Korea  cotton  yarn  and  textiles,  tobacco,  matches, 
coal  and  several  other  supplies.  If  we  widen  our  field  of 
observation  to  include  Manchuria  and  north  China,  "the 
conclusion  would  seem  tenable  that,  should  the  markets  of 
east  Asia  be  closed,  Japan's  national  life  would  be  para- 
lyzed, as  her  growing  population  would  be  largely  deprived 
of  its  food  and  occupation.  These  markets,  then,  must  be 
left  as  open  as  the  circumstances  permit,  if  Japan  would 
exist  as  a  growing  nation."2 

At  the  outbreak  of  the  Russia-Japan  War  the  Japanese 
were  controlling  seventy-eight  per  cent  of  the  tonnage  en- 
gaged in  shipping  on  the  coast  of  Korea.  Their  40,000 
fishermen  dominated  the  fisheries,  and  their  business  men 
owned  many  of  the  banks  and  commercial  houses,  the  former 
issuing  a  paper  currency  that  was  widely  used.  In  July, 
1888,  the  Japanese  completed  a  telegraph-line  from  Fusan 
to  Seoul,  and  September  8,  1898,  they  obtained  a  conces- 
sion to  build  a  railway  between  the  two  cities.  With  eager 
patriotism  they  quickly  subscribed  more  than  the  25,000,000 
yen  required  for  the  railway.  The  first  rail  was  laid  with 
imposing  ceremonies  August  4,  1901,  and  construction  was 
so  vigorously  pushed  that  the  line  was  opened  for  traffic 

1  Editorial,  September  25,  1906.  *  Asakawa,  pp.  8  seq. 


152  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

December  1,  1904.  This  brought  Seoul  within  fifty  hours 
of  Tokyo.  The  Russian  Minister  naively  remarked  that 
he  did  not  think  this  railway  would  be  a  good  thing  for 
Korea.  December  31,  1898,  the  Japanese  had  succeeded 
in  obtaining  another  valuable  concession,  the  railway  from 
Seoul  to  its  port,  Chemulpo,  twenty-six  miles  distant,  and 
the  line  was  opened  for  traffic  July  8,  1900.  August  23  of 
that  year  the  Japanese  secured  a  mining  concession,  Octo- 
ber 3  a  fishing  concession,  December  8  a  formal  recognition 
of  their  rights  in  Fusan,  and  May  20,  1901,  they  began  a 
settlement  in  Masampo  to  watch  and  checkmate  the  Rus- 
sians at  that  point. 

The  Japanese  closely  watched  for  any  revival  of  the  lag- 
ging scheme  of  the  French  and  Russians,  referred  to  on  a 
preceding  page,  to  construct  a  railway  from  Wiju  on  the 
Yalu  River  to  Seoul  the  capital;  and  they  formed  a  plan 
to  build  a  railway  of  their  own  from  Seoul  to  Gensan,  the 
excellent  harbor  on  the  northeast  coast,  and  another  line 
from  Fusan  to  Masampo.  Besides  the  railway  and  tele- 
graph lines  already  noted,  the  Japanese  had  obtained  be- 
fore the  war  concessions  for  a  coal-mine,  four  gold-mines, 
whale-fisheries,  a  postal  service,  several  banks  and  eighteen 
schools.  Every  little  while  Japanese  owners  were  found  to 
have  acquired  a  foothold  at  some  additional  point.  For 
example,  during  my  first  visit  hi  1901,  it  developed  that  a 
Japanese  had  bought  a  small  island  near  Chemulpo.  The 
Emperor  of  Korea  wanted  to  add  to  his  palace  grounds 
some  property  occupied  by  the  Presbyterian  Mission,  and, 
in  exchange,  offered  to  give  any  tract  of  land  outside  the 
walls  that  the  missionaries  might  select.  They  chose  a 
plot  on  the  road  between  the  West  Gate  and  the  river. 
His  Majesty  agreed,  but  when  he  tried  to  buy  the  site  for 
the  mission  he  found  that  parts  of  it  belonged  to  Japa- 
nese, who  refused  to  sell.  Altogether,  Japanese  interests  in 
Korea  had  become  extensive  and  the  Japanese  were  just 
as  averse  to  having  them  throttled  by  Russians  as  Amer- 
ican business  men  would  be  in  similar  circumstances.  Nat- 
urally, therefore,  they  prepared  to  defend  their  interests. 


THE  RUSSIA-JAPAN  WAR  153 

Another  reason  for  Japanese  opposition  to  Russia  involved 
the  far-reaching  question  of  the  resistance  of  Asia  to  the 
encroachments  of  Europe.  The  yellow  race  was  beginning 
to  view  with  alarm  and  irritation  the  aggressions  of  the 
white  race,  which  controlled  vast  and  populous  regions  in 
Asia,  and  had  unmistakable  designs  upon  others.  Man- 
churia was  already  Russian.  The  great  province  of  Shan- 
tung, China,  was  virtually  German,  and  if  Korea  also  were 
to  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  Slav,  the  consequences  to  Japan 
would  be  dire.  A  formidable  barrier  would  be  erected  be- 
tween the  Japanese  and  Chinese,  and  Japan  would  be  shut 
into  the  narrow  confines  of  her  islands  with  no  possibility 
of  expansion. 

Not  only  freedom  to  expand  but  self-preservation  was 
believed  to  be  involved.  Said  an  intelligent  Japanese: 
"Korea  is  an  arrow  pointed  at  the  heart  of  Japan."  A 
strait  only  120  miles  wide  separates  southern  Korea  from 
Japan,  and  Japan,  too,  at  the  vulnerable  point  of  en- 
trance to  the  Inland  Sea,  the  heart  of  the  Sunrise  King- 
dom. The  Japanese  therefore  felt  that  the  possession  of 
Korea  by  any  other  Power  would  be  a  grave  menace  to  their 
own  safety.  This  is  the  key  to  Japan's  policy  in  Korea. 
Mr.  Holcombe  once  described  a  conversation  that  he  had 
at  that  time  with  an  influential  Japanese:  "The  Japanese 
Minister — he  was  a  member  of  the  Cabinet — was  greatly 
disturbed  at  the  prospect  for  the  future.  He  insisted  that 
the  action  taken  by  Korea,  under  the  guidance  of  China, 
would  not  save  that  little  kingdom  from  attack  and  ab- 
sorption. Holding  up  one  hand  and  separating  the  first 
and  second  fingers  as  widely  as  possible  from  the  third  and 
fourth,  he  said :  '  Here  is  the  situation.  Those  four  fingers 
represent  the  four  great  European  Powers,  Great  Britain, 
Germany,  France,  and  Russia.  In  the  open  space  between 
them  lie  Japan,  China,  and  Korea.'  Then  with  really  dra- 
matic force,  he  added:  'Like  the  jaws  of  a  huge  vise,  those 
fingers  are  slowly  closing,  and  unless  some  supreme  effort 
is  made,  they  will  certainly  crush  the  national  life  out  of 
all  three/" 


154  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

We  can  therefore  understand  why  Japan  watched  the 
aggressions  of  Russia  with  growing  uneasiness  and  alarm. 
The  Japanese  Minister  in  St.  Petersburg  made  repeated  rep- 
resentations to  the  Russian  Government.  He  was  received 
with  the  utmost  courtesy  and  was  given  suave  reassurances; 
but  Russian  aggressions  continued.  The  fortifications  at 
Port  Arthur  were  made  more  impregnable.  The  military 
force  in  Manchuria  was  constantly  augmented.  At  last  the 
Japanese  felt  that  the  time  had  come  for  more  decisive  pro- 
test, and  July  28,  1903,  Baron  Komura,  the  Japanese  Min- 
ister for  Foreign  Affairs,  cabled  to  Mr.  Kurino,  the  Japanese 
Minister  in  St.  Petersburg: 

"The  unconditioned  and  permanent  occupation  of  Manchuria  by 
Russia  would  create  a  state  of  things  prejudicial  to  the  security  and 
interests  of  Japan.  ...  If  Russia  were  established  on  the  flank  of 
Korea,  it  would  be  a  constant  menace  to  the  separate  existence  of 
that  Empire,  or  at  least  would  make  Russia  the  dominant  Power  in 
Korea.  Korea  is  an  important  outpost  in  Japan's  line  of  defense.  .  .  . 
Moreover,  the  political  as  well  as  commercial  and  industrial  interests 
and  influence  which  Japan  possesses  in  Korea  are  paramount  over 
those  of  other  Powers.  These  interests  and  influence,  Japan,  having 
regard  to  her  own  security,  cannot  consent  to  surrender  to  or  share 
with  another  Power." 

This  warning  elicited  only  more  evasive  replies  and  un- 
kept  promises.  Whether  the  Russians  believed  that  the 
Japanese  would  not  really  fight,  or  whether  they  believed 
that  if  the  Japanese  did  fight  they  could  be  easily  defeated, 
it  is  difficult  to  tell.  It  is  probable  that  with  the  character- 
istic arrogance  of  the  Slav,  the  strength  of  the  Japanese  was 
contemptuously  undervalued.  At  any  rate,  the  Russians 
went  on  their  resolute  way  with  absolute  disregard  of  Japa- 
nese protests.  Finally,  it  became  apparent  to  the  dullest 
observer  that  further  negotiations  would  be  unavailing. 
February  6,  1904,  Japan  broke  off  diplomatic  relations  and 
withdrew  her  legation  from  St.  Petersburg.  February  7, 
the  Japanese  seized  Masampo  as  a  base  of  operations  in 
southern  Korea,  and  began  landing  troops.  February  8,  a 
Japanese  squadron  appeared  off  Chemulpo  and  sent  word 


THE  RUSSIA-JAPAN  WAR  155 

to  the  commander  of  the  Russian  ships  in  the  roadstead 
that  if  he  did  not  come  outside  on  the  open  sea  he  would 
be  attacked  in  the  harbor.  Although  the  Russians  had  only 
two  comparatively  small  vessels,  the  cruiser  Variag  and  the 
gunboat  Korietz,  and  were  hopelessly  outclassed  by  the 
size  and  weight  of  the  Japanese  squadron,  they  proved  once 
more  that  Russians  are  not  cowards,  and  the  next  day  they 
boldly  steamed  out  to  meet  their  antagonists.  The  battle 
that  ensued  was  brief  and  sharp,  and  of  course  resulted  in 
the  destruction  of  the  Russian  vessels  without  injury  to 
the  Japanese. 

That  night  the  main  Japanese  fleet  under  Admiral  Togo 
suddenly  appeared  off  Port  Arthur,  torpedoed  two  Russian 
battleships  and  a  cruiser,  and  the  next  day  (the  9th)  in  a 
general  engagement  disabled  another  battleship  and  four 
more  cruisers.  The  Russian  fleet  was  so  badly  crippled 
that  it  had  to  seek  refuge  in  the  harbor  of  Port  Arthur, 
where  it  was  blockaded  by  the  Japanese,  who  had  lost 
only  two  torpedo-boats. 

These  victories  gave  Japan  absolute  command  of  the  sea, 
and  troops  were  poured  into  Chemulpo  and  other  Korean 
ports  without  danger  of  interruption.  Thus  far  there  had 
been  no  formal  declaration  of  war,  but  February  10  the 
Czar  issued  one,  which  recited  the  facts  from  the  Russian 
view-point,  and  the  next  day  the  Japanese  declaration  was 
made. 

The  war  now  proceeded  with  tragic  swiftness  and  decisive- 
ness. Seoul  was  occupied  with  practically  no  opposition. 
The  Japanese  army  marched  northward,  and  the  first  land 
engagement  was  fought  at  Pyongyang,  February  28.  It 
was  hardly  more  than  a  skirmish,  for  the  Russians  were 
not  in  heavy  force,  and  were  easily  driven  back.  April  4 
General  Kuroki  occupied  Wiju  on  the  Korean  side  of  the 
Yalu  River,  and  May  1  the  battle  of  the  Yalu  was  fought. 
The  victory  of  the  Japanese  was  followed  by  their  rapid 
advance  into  Manchuria.  As  Admiral  Togo  reported,  May 
3,  that  he  had  "bottled"  up  the  harbor  at  Port  Arthur, 
a  Japanese  division  under  General  Oku  landed  at  Pitsewo 


156  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

May  5,  and  another  under  General  Nodzu  appeared  at 
Taku-shan  the  19th.  By  the  14th  the  Japanese  had  thrown 
themselves  across  the  South  Manchuria  Railway  and  cut 
off  Port  Arthur  from  communication  with  the  Russian  base 
in  the  north.  May  23-26  the  fierce  battle  of  Nan-shan 
Hill  gave  General  Oku  possession  of  that  formidable  posi- 
tion, which  commanded  the  approach  to  Port  Arthur  and 
enabled  the  Japanese  to  entrench  themselves  on  the  nar- 
row neck  of  the  isthmus,  so  that  the  isolation  of  Port  Arthur 
was  complete.  While  the  daring  and  skilful  Kuroki,  Oku, 
and  Nodzu  were  doing  their  relentless  will  with  the  Rus- 
sian divisions  which  they  encountered,  the  grim  General 
Nogi  began  the  formal  investment  of  Port  Arthur  the  mid- 
dle of  June. 

The  world,  already  startled  by  the  dazzling  succession  of 
Japanese  victories  by  land  and  sea,  was  appalled  by  the 
fierceness  of  the  titanic  struggle  that  followed.  The  Rus- 
sians had  done  everything  that  military  science,  prodigal 
expenditure,  and  an  unlimited  command  of  naked  human 
strength  could  suggest  to  make  the  fortress  impregnable. 
The  natural  position  of  Port  Arthur  is  exceedingly  strong, 
and  more  than  a  dozen  hills,  which  were  bare  of  trees,  had 
steep  sides,  and  commanded  wide  areas,  had  been  crowned 
by  no  less  than  fifty-two  forts  and  batteries.  Whatever 
may  be  said  of  the  incompetence  of  many  of  the  Russian 
officers,  no  one  can  question  the  bravery  of  the  Russian 
soldiers  who  were  shut  up  in  that  fortress.  Ignorant  and 
rather  stupid  peasants  they  have  been  called,  but  they 
fought  with  obstinate  courage  in  defense  of  their  position. 
For  nearly  seven  months  they  withstood  the  onset  of  their 
foes.  It  is  true  that  their  fortress  was  supposed  to  be 
impregnable,  and  that  the  garrison  was  large,  well  provi- 
sioned, and  amply  equipped.  But  there  was  something 
uncanny  about  the  fighting  of  the  Japanese.  They  were 
not  only  indifferent  to  death,  but  they  eagerly  coveted  the 
honor  and  privilege  of  dying  for  their  Emperor.  They 
threw  themselves  against  those  frowning  battlements  with 
entire  disregard  of  the  hail  of  shot  and  shell  which  the 


THE  RUSSIA-JAPAN  WAR  157 

Russian  infantry  and  artillery  poured  upon  them.  They 
made  repeated  assaults  in  which  whole  brigades  were  an- 
nihilated; but  other  brigades  took  their  places  undis- 
mayed, and  renewed  the  fighting.  Every  possible  resource 
of  modern  discovery  and  invention  was  called  into  requisi- 
tion, and  the  results  of  peaceful  study  and  industry  were 
employed  to  intensify  the  horrors  of  human  slaughter. 
Electricity  for  the  first  time  became  an  effective  force 
in  war.  Search-lights,  star-rockets,  and  parachute-torches 
swept  the  approaches  with  such  brilliancy  that  darkness 
was  no  longer  a  cover  for  night  assaults.  Cannon  were 
raised,  aimed,  fired,  and  lowered  by  electrical  devices. 
Barbed-wire  entanglements  were  charged  with  electric 
currents  which  killed  every  foe  who  touched  them.  An 
electric  railway  ran  inside  the  long  arc  of  forts,  so  that 
reinforcements  could  be  rushed  to  any  point  of  attack. 
Headquarters  were  telephone  central  offices,  with  lines  ra- 
diating to  every  part  of  the  field.  No  furiously  galloping 
staff-officers  were  required  to  transmit  orders  and  receive 
information;  the  telephone  did  in  a  few  seconds  what  the 
fastest  horse  would  have  required  hours  to  do  even  if  he 
were  not  shot.  When  the  Japanese  captured  203  Metre 
Hill,  telephone  messages  from  its  summit  directed  the  fire 
of  heavy  siege-guns  in  protected  places,  so  that  the  gun- 
ners made  untenable  a  city  and  harbor  which  they  could 
not  see.  The  Japanese  fleet  added  to  the  pandemonium 
of  ruin.  Battleships  cannot  wisely  take  as  many  risks  as 
land  batteries,  for  it  requires  not  only  several  million  dol- 
lars but  several  years  to  build  a  battleship,  while  a  few 
guns  in  a  land  battery  are  easily  replaced.  Admiral  Togo 
solved  this  problem  by  having  tiny  torpedo-boats,  which 
the  Russians  found  it  difficult  to  see  and  almost  impossible 
to  hit,  lie  several  miles  off  shore,  and  by  wireless  dispatches 
give  the  range  and  a  report  on  each  shot  to  gunners  on 
the  battleships  lying  safely  out  of  reach  of  the  Russian 
forts. 

Day  and  night  for  awful  months  the  bombardment  con- 
tinued.   Day  and  night  the  inexorable  brigades  zigzagged 


158  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

their  trenches  closer  and  closer  to  the  forts,  and  charged 
against  stone  walls,  heavy  cannon,  and  machine-guns. 
Finally,  flesh  and  blood  could  endure  no  more.  The  last 
dispatch  of  the  Russian  commander-in-chief ,  dated  January 
1,  described  the  Japanese  assault  of  December  31,  and 
added:  "We  shall  be  obliged  to  capitulate,  but  everything 
is  in  the  hands  of  God.  We  have  suffered  fearful  losses. 
Great  Sovereign,  pardon  us.  We  have  done  everything 
humanly  possible.  Judge  us,  but  be  merciful.  Nearly 
eleven  months  of  uninterrupted  struggles  have  exhausted 
us.  Only  one-quarter  of  the  garrison  is  alive,  and  of  this 
number  the  majority  are  sick,  and,  being  obliged  to  act  on 
the  defensive,  without  even  short  intervals  for  repose,  are 
worn  to  shadows."  January  2,  1905,  the  great  fortress, 
which  had  been  isolated  from  all  support  since  May  14,  sur- 
rendered. 

General  Stoessel  has  been  severely  criticised  for  surren- 
dering even  then.  His  own  countrymen  in  Russia  bitterly 
reproached  him,  and  he  went  home  to  face  a  court  martial. 
It  was  said  that  one  of  his  subordinate  generals,  General 
Kondrachenko,  was  the  real  inspiration  of  the  Russian 
troops,  and  that  when  he  was  killed  at  the  battle  of  203 
Metre  Hill,  General  Stoessel  lost  not  only  heart  but  ability 
to  continue  the  fighting.  His  reply  did  not  help  either  his 
military  skill  or  his  reputation  for  veracity.  He  declared 
on  his  return  to  Moscow  that  of  his  680  officers  317  were 
killed  and  all  the  rest  wounded;  that  his  garrison  had  been 
reduced  from  17,000  to  4,000,  including  wounded;  that  his 
"provisions  were  almost  entirely  exhausted" ;  that  he  "could 
hold  out  no  longer  for  want  of  food";  and  that  he  "could 
not  reply  to  the  enemy's  fire  for  want  of  ammunition." 
These  statements  do  not  harmonize  with  General  Nogi's 
official  report  that  he  captured  1,323  Russian  officers  who 
were  neither  sick  nor  wounded;  25,011  sound  and  uninjured 
soldiers,  sailors,  and  marines;  690,000  rations  of  flour,  666,- 
000  rations  of  hard  bread,  80,000  rations  of  split  barley, 
175,000  rations  of  tinned  beef,  11,200  rations  of  corn-meal, 
1,125  rations  of  rice,  33,000  pounds  of  sugar,  and  583,000 


THE  RUSSIA-JAPAN  WAR  159 

pounds  of  salt — a  sufficient  supply  to  have  maintained  the 
entire  garrison  for  at  least  two  months  longer;  528  cannon 
that  were  in  good  condition,  an  ample  supply  of  small  arms, 
4,773  rounds  for  cannon  of  6-inch  caliber  and  upward, 
62,640  rounds  for  guns  of  3  to  6-inch  caliber,  and  138,821 
rounds  for  quick-firers,  small  field-pieces,  and  Maxims, 
5,436,240  rounds  of  small-arm  ammunition,  33  tons  of 
gunpowder,  1,588  mines,  grenades,  etc.,  and  "an  enormous 
amount  of  material  and  appliances  intended  for  use  in  the 
further  strengthening  of  the  forts." 

One  is  forced  to  conclude  either  that  General  Stoessel 
did  not  know  what  he  had,  perhaps  deceived  by  frightened 
or  corrupt  subordinates,  or  that  he  misrepresented  the  facts 
in  order  to  justify  his  surrender.  Doctor  Morrison,  the 
famous  correspondent  of  the  London  Times,  who  inspected 
Port  Arthur  soon  after  its  fall,  wrote  that  "no  more  dis- 
creditable surrender  has  been  recorded  in  history."  Mr. 
George  Kennan,  an  equally  careful  and  judicious  observer, 
while  calling  attention  to  the  glaring  discrepancies  which 
have  been  noted  between  the  statements  of  General  Stoessel 
and  the  report  of  General  Nogi,  and  while  convinced  that 
the  fortress  could  have  held  out  a  month,  and  possibly  two 
months  longer,  nevertheless  does  not  agree  with  Doctor 
Morrison  that  the  surrender  was  unnecessary  and  discredi- 
table, but  that  on  the  contrary  the  "situation,  when  Gen- 
eral Stoessel  surrendered,  was  hopeless;  but  he  should  not 
have  allowed  it  to  become  hopeless."  l 

It  is  always  easy,  in  the  quiet  and  leisure  of  later  days, 
to  find  mistakes  and  blunders  in  military  operations.  No 
siege  in  history  has  ever  been  characterized  by  faultless 
judgment  on  both  sides.  The  din  and  tumult  and  strain 
of  battle  day  and  night  for  half  a  year  are  apt  to  warp 
the  mind  and  get  on  the  nerves.  I  visited  Port  Arthur  in 
1909  and  stood  upon  the  hills  which  had  been  crowned  by 
the  Russian  forts.  The  destruction  which  was  apparent 
even  then,  four  years  after  the  fall  of  the  fortress,  was  ap- 
palling. The  forts  were  a  chaos  of  ruin.  Summits  and 

1  Article  in  The  Outlook,  September  30,  1905. 


160  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

slopes  were  thickly  pitted  with  holes  made  by  bursting  shells. 
Those  hilltops  must  have  been  belching  volcanoes  of  death, 
and  it  is  difficult  to  understand  how  the  Russian  soldiers 
could  have  stayed  on  them  as  long  as  they  did.  The  fact 
that  the  fiercest,  most  daring,  and  most  determined  fighters 
the  world  has  ever  known,  equipped  with  every  conceivable 
weapon  and  appliance  of  scientific  warfare,  had  to  fight 
for  about  six  months  at  a  cost  of  45,000  killed  and  wounded 
men  before  they  could  capture  that  fortress  eloquently 
testifies  to  the  bravery,  fortitude,  and  resourcefulness  of  its 
defenders.  Whether  any  other  white  soldiers  would  have 
held  out  longer,  I  doubt.  The  Japanese  certainly  did  not 
despise  their  foes,  for  they  have  built  a  monument  in  memory 
of  the  15,000  Russian  dead,  and  General  Nogi  wrote  to  the 
Japanese  Minister  of  War  a  few  days  after  his  victory:  "The 
feeling  I  have  at  this  moment  is  solely  one  of  anguish  and 
humiliation  that  I  should  have  expended  so  many  lives,  so 
much  ammunition,  and  such  a  long  time  in  the  accom- 
plishment of  this  task." 

Meantime,  heavy  fighting  had  been  going  on  farther 
north.  The  Japanese  army,  now  consolidated  under  Field- 
Marshal  Oyama,  met  the  Russian  army  under  General 
Kuropatkin  at  Liao-yang,  and  a  great  battle  was  fought 
August  24  to  September  4.  In  the  number  of  men  engaged, 
the  extent  of  country  fought  over,  the  courage  and  stub- 
born determination  manifested  on  both  sides,  and  in  the 
duration  of  the  conflict,  the  battle  of  Liao-yang  must  be 
counted  one  of  the  great  battles  of  history.  But  Russian 
courage  and  obstinacy  had  to  yield  at  last  before  the  de- 
termined onset  of  a  foe  which  united  equal  courage  and 
obstinacy  with  superior  generalship  and  utter  recklessness 
of  death. 

The  Russian  army  sullenly  retreated  northward,  pressed 
and  harassed  at  every  step  by  the  victorious  Japanese,  but 
skilfully  handled  by  Kuropatkin.  At  the  Shaho  River  he 
boldly  took  the  aggressive  in  a  desperate  effort  to  check  the 
Japanese  advance.  Ten  days  (October  11-21)  the  tide  of 


THE  RUSSIA-JAPAN  WAR  161 

battle  surged  back  and  forth,  now  favoring  one  side  and 
then  the  other,  till  heavy  rains  stopped  the  weary  comba- 
tants. Neither  Russians  nor  Japanese  could  claim  a  de- 
cisive victory,  but  the  Russians  realized  that  they  had  not 
beaten  back  their  oncoming  foe.  Both  armies  were  well- 
nigh  exhausted,  and,  intrenching  themselves,  they  went 
into  rude  winter  quarters,  the  men  living  in  hastily  made 
dugouts  along  the  river.  There  were  numerous  small  en- 
gagements, one  of  them,  General  Gripenberg's  brave  but 
fruitless  attempt  (January  25-29)  to  turn  the  wing  of  the 
Japanese  army,  calling  150,000  men  into  action,  and  en- 
tailing a  Russian  loss  of  12,000  men,  the  Japanese  loss  being 
5,000.  After  that  a  period  of  comparative  quiet  ensued. 
The  Manchurian  winter  is  bitterly  cold,  and  the  Japanese 
suffered  much  as  they  were  not  so  accustomed  as  the  Rus- 
sians to  such  low  temperatures. 

Well  rested,  and  reinforced  by  General  Nogi's  army, 
which  had  been  liberated  by  the  fall  of  Port  Arthur,  the 
Japanese  did  not  wait  for  the  spring,  which  they  knew 
would  convert  those  loamy  plains  into  unfathomable  mud. 
Amid  the  cold  storms  of  late  February  the  memorable  battle 
of  Mukden  was  begun.  General  Kuropatkin  had  replaced 
Admiral  Alexeieff  as  Russian  commander-in-chief  in  Man- 
churia, October  20,  and  he  had  concentrated  all  his  re- 
sources for  this  supreme  struggle  which  he  well  knew  must 
come.  He  was  a  brave  and  gallant  officer,  and  after  the 
war  he  wrote  a  book  which  discusses,  with  remarkable  frank- 
ness for  a  Russian,  the  causes  of  his  country's  defeat. 
March  1,  and  therefore  while  the  battle  was  still  in  progress, 
he  was  superseded  by  General  Linevitch,  who  was  believed 
to  be  a  more  aggressive  commander.  The  rigors  of  winter 
intensified  the  usual  horrors  of  warfare.  What  little  rest 
and  sleep  the  constant  fighting  permitted  the  troops  had 
to  snatch  where  adequate  shelter  could  not  be  obtained, 
and  wounded  men,  whose  lives  might  have  been  saved  in 
ordinary  weather  conditions,  soon  froze  to  death.  Again, 
as  in  every  preceding  battle,  the  Japanese  were  victorious. 


162  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

It  is  easy  for  the  armchair  critic  at  a  cosey  fireside  to  point 
out  what  the  Russian  generals  might  have  done  that  they 
did  not  do.  No  one  is  perfect,  not  even  a  critic,  and  in  the 
tumult  of  battle  errors  of  judgment  are  likely  to  occur  even 
with  the  best  of  generals  and  the  bravest  of  soldiers.  But 
impartial  history  will  undoubtedly  record  that  an  army 
that  could  withstand  Japanese  ferocity  and  skill  for  seven- 
teen days  probably  did  all  that  any  other  army  would  or 
could  have  done. 

Mukden  was  not  only  the  greatest  battle  of  the  war,  but 
it  was  one  of  the  greatest  battles  of  history.  Before  the 
European  War  of  1914,  what  other  battle  had  engaged  a 
million  men,  on  a  fighting-line  nearly  a  hundred  miles  long, 
and  fought  for  seventeen  successive  days  (February  24- 
March  12)?  The  Japanese  victory  ended  the  important 
land  fighting  of  the  war.  Both  armies  had  put  forth  their 
supreme  effort.  The  Russians  could  do  no  more  without 
time  to  recoup  their  losses  and  establish  themselves  at  a 
new  base.  The  Japanese,  holding  undisputed  possession  of 
all  Korea  and  lower  Manchuria,  and  exhausted  by  their 
terrific  struggles,  deemed  it  unwise  to  push  the  fighting 
farther  northward  into  a  region  which  was  becoming  in- 
conveniently distant  from  their  base  of  supplies  and  where 
the  Russians  could  fight  another  battle  to  better  advan- 
tage. Both  armies,  therefore,  remained  in  comparative 
inaction  while  the  last  great  drama  of  the  war  was  being 
developed  on  the  ocean. 

Russia  had  assembled  all  of  her  available  ships  that 
could  be  spared  from  home,  and  sent  them  to  the  Far  East 
under  command  of  Admiral  Rojestvensky  for  a  final  effort 
to  regain  her  lost  ground.  The  fleet  steamed  out  of  the 
Baltic  in  the  latter  part  of  October,  followed  by  high  hopes 
that  it  would  be  able  to  turn  the  fortunes  of  war  which  had 
been  running  so  heavily  against  them.  The  state  of  mind 
of  the  Russian  officers  and  sailors  themselves  was  pathetically 
illustrated  by  their  firing  upon  some  innocent  fishing-boats 
one  night  before  they  had  passed  out  of  the  safe  waters  of 
the  North  Sea.  Officers  who  could  mistake  such  boats  at 


THE  RUSSIA-JAPAN  WAR  163 

such  a  place  for  Japanese  torpedo-boats  must  have  been 
drunk,  or  else  in  such  pitiable  terror  as  Kipling  describes 
in  The  Destroyers : 

"  Panic  that  shells  the  drifting  spar, 
Loud  waste  with  none  to  check; 
Mad  fear  that  rakes  a  scornful  star 
Or  sweeps  a  consort's  deck." 

After  this  untoward  incident,  which  excited  the  mingled 
ridicule  and  indignation  of  the  world,  the  Russian  fleet 
pursued  its  voyage  to  the  Far  East.  As  it  entered  the 
North  Pacific,  the  tension  not  only  of  the  Russians  but  of 
the  watching  world  was  great.  Not  a  syllable  had  been 
heard  regarding  the  whereabouts  of  the  Japanese  fleet. 
Rumor  had  located  it  at  a  dozen  different  places,  and  the 
Russians  had  been  for  weeks  in  nightly  expectation  of  at- 
tack. The  absolute  secrecy  which  the  Japanese  preserved 
is  a  striking  illustration  of  the  loyalty  of  the  Japanese  people. 
Although  tens  of  thousands  of  Japanese  must  have  known 
that  Admiral  Togo's  fleet  was  lying  among  the  islands  off 
the  southern  coast  of  Korea,  near  Masampo,  although  the 
sound  of  guns  in  target  practice  could  be  heard  by  hundreds 
of  villages,  and  although  scores  of  war  correspondents  and 
other  curious  Europeans  and  Americans  were  scattered 
among  the  treaty  ports  as  near  to  the  scene  of  expected 
operations  as  they  could  get,  not  a  single  Japanese  disclosed 
the  secret  of  his  country,  and  the  rigid  censorship  made  it 
impossible  for  any  one  else  to  send  a  telltale  letter  or  tele- 
gram out  of  the  country. 

Japanese  methods  were  further  illustrated  by  the  plans 
for  locating  the  Russian  fleet  as  it  approached.  There  being 
three  entrances  to  the  Japan  Sea  by  which  Vladivostok 
might  be  approached,  Korea,  Tsugaru,  and  La  Pe"rouse 
Straits,  Rojestvensky  assumed  that  Togo  would  divide  his 
fleet  into  three  squadrons  so  that  the  Russian  fleet  would 
find  only  one-third  of  the  Japanese  strength  in  whichever 
channel  he  might  choose.  As  the  Korea  Strait  is  the 
one  farthest  from  Vladivostok,  the  most  easily  and  safely 


164  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

navigated  in  the  foggy  month  of  May,  the  channel  which 
affords  the  most  direct  route  by  avoiding  the  journey 
around  Japan,  and  as  it  is  the  natural  approach  in  ordi- 
nary circumstances,  Rojestvensky  concluded  that  its  very 
advantages  would  lead  Togo  to  believe  that  it  would  not 
be  chosen,  and  that  it  might,  therefore,  be  the  safest. 
Togo,  with  almost  uncanny  prescience,  foresaw  this  reason- 
ing, and  kept  his  fleet  together  at  this  point.  It  was  a 
bold  decision,  staking  everything  on  a  theory;  but  it  proved 
to  be  sound. 

Elaborate  precautions  were  taken  for  reporting  the  Rus- 
sian fleet  as  soon  as  possible.  The  coast  of  Japan  was 
lined  with  signal  stations  on  promontories,  islands,  and 
mountain-tops.  A  wide  expanse  of  sea  was  divided  into 
small  numbered  squares.  Swift  torpedo-boats  and  scout- 
ships  equipped  with  wireless  telegraph  cruised  far  out  at 
sea,  watching  night  and  day.  When,  at  five  o'clock  Satur- 
day, May  27,  the  scoutship  Shinano-maru  sent  a  wireless 
message  reading:  "Enemy's  fleet  sighted  in  square  203" 
(near  Quelpart  Island),  Togo  was  instantly  ready  to  move. 
While  the  Russians,  still  ignorant  of  the  whereabouts  of  the 
enemy,  steamed  at  full  speed  into  the  strait,  already  exult- 
ing in  the  thought  that  its  destination  at  Vladivostok  was 
so  near,  and  that  most  of  the  Japanese  warships  were 
guarding  the  two  northern  channels  hundreds  of  miles  away, 
Admiral  Togo's  warships  suddenly  appeared  around  the 
head  of  an  island,  and  the  battle  was  on.  European  ex- 
perts had  credited  the  Russian  fleet  with  faithful  target 
practice  and  straight  shooting;  but  either  the  Russians  had 
been  given  credit  which  they  did  not  merit,  or  official  cor- 
ruption had  sent  them  out  with  inferior  guns  and  ammuni- 
tion. Both  conjectures  are  probably  correct.  At  any  rate, 
the  Japanese  fire  was  far  more  effective  than  the  Russian. 
"At  a  distance  of  four  miles,"  a  Russian  lieutenant  lamented 
to  Mr.  George  Kennan,  "the  Japanese  gunners  seemed  to 
hit  us  with  almost  every  shot  that  they  fired.  Our  men  had 
not  had  practice  enough  to  shoot  accurately  at  such  ranges. 
We  hoped  that  we  might  be  able  to  crowd  Togo's  ships  up 


THE  RUSSIA-JAPAN  WAR  165 

toward  the  land  on  the  Japan  side  of  the  strait,  and  so  get 
nearer  to  them;  but  they  were  too  fast  for  us.  They 
circled  around  ahead  of  us,  and  knocked  us  to  pieces  at  such 
long  ranges  that  we  were  barely  able  to  see  them  through 
the  mist."  Never  was  naval  victory  more  overwhelming 
than  that  which  the  Japanese  achieved.  The  firing  com- 
menced at  2:08  P.  M.,  and  within  thirty-seven  minutes  six 
of  the  eight  Russian  battleships  were  so  badly  injured  that 
Togo  stated  in  his  official  report  that  "at  2:45  P.  M.  the  re- 
sult of  the  battle  had  been  decided."  The  remainder  of  the 
time  was  spent  by  the  Japanese  in  hunting  down  and  sink- 
ing or  capturing  the  scattered  and  fleeing  Russian  vessels. 
Within  thirty  hours  from  the  firing  of  the  first  shot  Rojest- 
vensky  was  a  wounded  prisoner,  and  of  a  Russian  fleet  of 
eight  battleships,  three  armored  cruisers,  three  protected 
cruisers,  three  coast-defense  armor-clads,  and  twenty-one 
auxiliary  cruisers,  destroyers,  transports,  and  special-service 
ships — thirty-eight  in  all — all  but  four  were  sunk,  beached, 
or  captured,  and  even  of  the  four  that  escaped  only  one, 
the  auxiliary  cruiser  Almaz,  succeeded  in  reaching  Vladivos- 
tok, the  others  finding  refuge  in  Manila  Bay.  This  annihila- 
tion of  the  Russian  fleet  cost  the  Japanese  only  three  tor- 
pedo-boats sunk,  three  cruisers  temporarily  disabled,  116 
officers  and  men  killed,  and  538  wounded. 


CHAPTER  X 
CAUSES  AND  EFFECTS  OF  RUSSIAN  DEFEAT 

THE  world  was  at  first  amazed  by  the  sweeping  victory 
of  the  Japanese.  It  had  seemed  almost  foolhardy  for  a 
nation  of  about  50,000,000  of  people,  with  small  financial 
resources  and  a  limited  territory  of  149,000  square  miles, 
to  attack  a  nation  of  150,000,000  of  people,  supported  by 
the  enormous  wealth  of  8,650,000  square  miles  of  territory. 
But  it  soon  appeared  that  the  contestants  were  not  so  un- 
equally matched  as  such  comparisons  might  suggest.  I 
have  discussed  in  another  chapter  the  military  efficiency  of 
the  Japanese,  the  thoroughness  with  which  they  prepared 
for  the  war,  and  the  zeal  and  determination  with  which  the 
entire  nation  supported  it. 

Remoteness  from  the  zone  of  hostilities  was  a  special  dis- 
advantage to  the  Russians.  The  scene  of  fighting  was  so 
close  to  Japan  that  she  could  concentrate  her  whole  military 
and  naval  force  upon  her  enemy.  Russia,  on  the  other 
hand,  was  more  than  five  thousand  miles  from  the  zone  of 
hostilities,  and  after  her  naval  force  in  the  Far  East  was  shut 
up  in  Port  Arthur,  she  was  dependent  upon  a  single-track 
railway,  poorly  built,  inadequately  equipped,  and  with  an 
awkward  and  time-destroying  break  at  Lake  Baikal.  More- 
over, Russia  did  not  dare  send  her  entire  army  and  navy  to 
the  Far  East  and  thus  leave  her  home  territory  unprotected 
from  the  warlike  nations  with  whose  jealousies  she  always 
had  to  reckon.  Japan's  available  fleet  for  a  war  so  near 
her  doors  was  actually  stronger  than  Russia's.  She  had, 
too,  a  great  advantage  in  convenient  ports  to  coal,  clean, 
and  repair  her  ships.  Admiral  Togo  could  not  have  fought 
the  battle  of  Korea  Strait  with  the  guns  which  had  seen 
such  hard  service  before  Port  Arthur,  for  the  life  of  a  big 
gun  is  only  about  a  hundred  rounds,  even  if  it  is  not  hit 

166 


CAUSES  AND  EFFECTS  OF  RUSSIAN  DEFEAT     167 

by  the  enemy.  But  it  was  easy  to  regun  his  ships  from 
home  navy-yards  close  at  hand.  The  famous  but  some- 
what illiterate  Confederate  General  Forrest,  when  asked 
for  the  secret  of  successful  warfare,  replied:  "Git  thar  fust 
with  the  mostest  men."  This  was  precisely  what  Japan 
was  able  to  do,  and  what  Russia  was  not  able  to  do. 

The  causes  of  Russia's  defeat,  however,  lay  not  only  in 
the  superior  military  spirit  and  efficiency  of  her  foe  but  in 
her  own  blunders  and  deficiencies.  The  serene  self-con- 
fidence of  the  Russian,  his  contemptuous  under-valuation  of 
his  enemy,  and  his  "heaven-born"  faith  in  Russia's  divine 
mission,  as  well  as  official  graft  and  corruption,  combined 
to  prevent  a  preparation  which  the  character  of  the  foe 
required.  "The  unpreparedness  of  Russia"  is  the  burden 
of  General  Kuropatkin's  Military  and  Political  Memoirs, 
published  after  the  war.  He  declared  that  the  general  staff 
estimated  the  total  number  of  available  Japanese  troops 
at  only  a  little  more  than  400,000,  and  that  it  ignored  im- 
portant information  that  had  been  sent  by  Russian  officers 
who  had  been  in  Japan. 

The  leadership  in  the  field  was  little  if  any  above  medi- 
ocrity. The  war  was  a  graveyard  for  the  reputation  of 
Russian  generals  and  admirals;  not  one  emerged  as  a  com- 
mander of  the  first  rank,  and  several  proved  to  be  grossly 
incompetent.  I  have  referred  elsewhere  to  General  Stoes- 
sel's  course  at  Port  Arthur.  General  Kuropatkin  showed 
great  ability  in  extricating  his  defeated  army  from  the 
clutches  of  the  victorious  Japanese,  and  perhaps  he  did  as 
well  as  could  have  been  expected,  considering  all  that  he 
had  to  contend  with  in  his  own  army  and  government,  as 
well  as  from  the  Japanese.  But  his  abilities  were  those  of  a 
McClellan  rather  than  of  a  Grant  or  Sheridan — strong  in 
organizing  and  retreating,  but  lacking  in  genius  for  aggres- 
sive operations.  General  Linevitch  was  regarded  by  his 
friends  as  a  general  who  might  have  retrieved  the  Russian 
fortunes;  but  he  attained  independent  command  only 
three  months  and  a  half  before  negotiations  for  peace 
stopped  the  fighting.  Admiral  Alexeieff  was  the  com- 


168  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE   FAR  EAST 

mander-in-chief  by  land  and  sea  at  the  outbreak  of  the  war, 
and  is  chiefly  remembered  for  his  colossal  arrogance  and 
his  amazing  lack  of  comprehension  of  the  crisis  which  he 
was  largely  instrumental  in  precipitating.  Poor  Rojestven- 
sky !  is  all  that  one  can  say  of  the  commander  of  the  Baltic 
Fleet,  and  that  is  a  pathetic  thing  to  say  of  an  admiral  in  a 
historic  battle.  General  Kondrachenko  and  Admiral  Ma- 
karoff  were  probably  the  most  capable  and  brilliant  of  the 
Russian  commanders,  although  their  tragic  end  clothed 
their  reputations  with  a  glamour  which  the  survivors  of  the 
war  probably  envied,  General  Kondrachenko  having  met 
his  death  in  one  of  the  mine  explosions  at  Port  Arthur 
and  Admiral  Makaroff  having  been  blown  up  with  his  flag- 
ship, the  Petropavlovsk,  April  13,  1904,  only  five  weeks  after 
he  assumed  command  of  the  fleet. 

The  Japanese,  on  the  other  hand,  developed  a  galaxy 
of  military  stars  of  the  first  magnitude.  Field-Marshal 
Oyama,  the  commander-in-chief  in  the  field,  increased  an 
already  great  reputation.  His  chief  of  staff,  General  Ko- 
dama,  educated  in  Germany,  minister  of  war  in  1900-1902, 
vice-chief  of  the  general  staff  at  the  outbreak  of  the  war, 
and  then  chief  of  staff  of  the  armies  in  Manchuria,  was  a 
strategist  of  phenomenal  brilliancy,  and  his  genius  planned 
the  battles  which  the  aggressive  Oyama  carried  out.  An 
Englishman  has  called  him  "the  Kitchener  of  Japan," 
which  is  a  high  compliment  to  Kitchener.  Lieutenant 
General  Fukushima,  assistant  chief  of  staff,  was  a  worthy 
associate.  Four  separate  armies  executed  the  plans  which 
were  framed  by  these  experts.  Each  army  was  led  by  a 
lieutenant  general  to  whom  the  military  critics  of  Europe 
and  America  unhesitatingly  accord  the  first  rank:  Kuroki, 
Nodzu,  Oku,  and  Nogi.  In  the  navy,  Vice-Admirals  Uriu, 
Kamimura,  Dewa,  and  Kataoka  bulk  large  in  the  world's 
respect,  while  Togo  is  universally  regarded  as  one  of  the 
greatest  naval  strategists  and  fighters  in  all  history. 

The  Russian  leadership  lacked  not  only  first-class  ability 
but  continuity.  The  commander-in-chief  was  changed  three 
times  during  that  short  war.  Admiral  Alexeieff  held  su- 


CAUSES  AND  EFFECTS  OF  RUSSIAN  DEFEAT     169 

preme  command  from  the  beginning  until  the  middle  of 
October,  1904;  then  General  Kuropatkin  was  commander- 
in-chief  till  March  1,  1905,  and  after  that  and  until  the  close 
of  the  war  General  Linevitch.  Corps  commanders  were 
constantly  being  changed,  and  General  Kuropatkin  has  told 
the  world  in  his  Memoirs  an  unhappy  story  of  the  dissen- 
sions which  existed  among  them,  and  between  them  and 
their  commanders-in-chief.  Against  a  united  foe,  the 
Russian  conduct  of  the  war  was  marked  by  constant  squab- 
bles between  the  civil  and  military  authorities,  between  the 
officers  of  the  army  and  navy,  and  between  different  ele- 
ments of  the  population  at  home. 

Innumerable  stories  were  in  circulation  regarding  not  only 
the  administrative  dishonesty  but  the  personal  character 
of  the  Russian  officers.  One  might  ignore  rumors,  but  one 
cannot  ignore  such  direct  testimony  as  that  of  Major  Louis 
L.  Seaman,  of  the  American  army,  who  was  in  Manchuria 
and  who  says  that  "arriving  trains  that  should  have  been 
crowded  with  men  and  munitions  of  war  brought  each  a 
full  complement  of  the  demi-monde  and  vodka.  The  thou- 
sands of  these  creatures  and  the  tens  of  thousands  of  cases 
of  vodka  that  passed  over  the  Siberian  Railway  in  place  of 
food  and  equipments  must  have  horrified  even  the  gentle 
Verestchagin,  familiar  as  he  was  with  war  in  its  most  brutal 
and  bestial  aspects.  Wine,  women,  and  song  were  certainly 
the  undoing  of  Russia.  Sodom  and  Gomorrah — the  cur- 
rent synonyms  of  Port  Arthur  and  Vladivostok  in  the 
Orient — were  temples  of  virtue  in  comparison  to  the  de- 
bauchery, licentiousness,  flagrant  immoralities,  and  openly 
flaunted  vice  recently  practised  in  those  unhappy  cities."1 

Mr.  F.  A.  McKenzie,  who  visited  Port  Arthur  both  before 
and  after  the  siege,  gives  similar  testimony:  "Life  seemed 
one  endless  round  of  champagne,  of  songs,  of  dances,  of 
entertainments,  and  of  gaiety.  There  was  money  for  every 
man  with  influence;  contracts  with  great  profits  attached 
were  to  be  had;  posts  were  to  be  filled  and  perquisites  were 

1  Address  before  the  Association  of  Military  and  Naval  Surgeons  of  the 
United  States,  St.  Louis,  October  12,  1904. 


170  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

to  be  claimed.  Why  should  the  officer  trouble  about  drill 
and  discipline  when  there  were  ladies  to  entertain,  wine  to 
be  drunk,  and  good  fellowship  to  be  emphasized?  The 
army  of  parasites  and  hawks  had  gathered.  There  were  the 
Jewish  contractors,  sleek,  ingratiating,  and  hateful,  making 
good  fortunes,  soon  to  be  paid  for  by  the  blood  of  Russian 
peasants.  There  were  the  ladies  of  the  half-world,  sum- 
moned from  three  continents.  .  .  .  Then  came  the  guns — 
no  play  salute  this !" l 

Contrast  these  bacchanalian  revels  with  the  rigid  dis- 
cipline of  the  Japanese  army.  The  Japanese  are  far  from 
being  a  moral  people,  but  in  their  camps  there  were  no  such 
orgies  of  drunkenness  and  lust  as  those  which  disgraced 
the  camps  of  their  foes.  Perhaps  it  would  be  too  much  to 
assert  that  Japanese  officers  are  more  chaste  than  Russian; 
but  they  certainly  are  more  abstemious  when  on  duty  hi 
time  of  war.  While  the  Russian  camps  were  notorious  for 
wine  and  women,  and  carloads  of  liquor  and  prostitutes 
took  railway  space  that  was  urgently  needed  for  troops 
and  munitions,  the  Japanese  generals  enforced  a  Spartan 
severity  of  conduct. 

The  Russian  rank  and  file  were  almost  wholly  lacking  in 
the  enthusiasm  which  so  conspicuously  characterized  the 
Japanese.  The  Russian  peasant  soldier  is  undoubtedly 
brave,  his  fighting  showed  that;  but  he  is  rather  dull,  heavy 
in  mind  as  well  as  body,  loyal  indeed  to  his  country  and  re- 
ligion, but  often  hating  his  government  and  officers.  He  felt 
little  personal  interest  in  the  war,  and  fought  because  he 
was  ordered  to  do  so  without  half  understanding  what  he 
was  fighting  for.  General  Kuropatkin  wrote:  "Out  of 
compassion  we  permitted  soldiers  on  the  line  to  carry  off 
their  wounded  comrades.  Many  companies  literally  melted 
away  from  this  cause;  there  were  many  instances  when 
perfectly  sound  men  went  to  the  rear  under  the  pretext  of 
carrying  off  the  wounded,  and  when  six,  eight,  and  even 
ten  men  carried  one  wounded  man.  .  .  .  The  intellectual 
backwardness  of  our  soldiers  was  a  great  disadvantage  to 

1  The  Unveiled  East,  pp.  102-103. 


CAUSES  AND  EFFECTS  OF  RUSSIAN  DEFEAT     171 

us,  because  war  now  requires  far  more  intelligence  and 
initiative  on  the  part  of  the  individual  soldier  than  ever 
before.  Our  men  fought  heroically  in  compact  masses  or 
in  fairly  close  formation,  but  few  of  our  soldiers  were  capa- 
ble of  fighting  intelligently  as  individuals.  In  this  respect 
the  Japanese  were  much  superior  to  us.  Their  non-com- 
missioned officers  were  far  better  developed  intellectually 
than  ours,  and  among  such  officers,  as  well  as  among  many 
of  the  common  soldiers  whom  we  took  as  prisoners,  we  found 
diaries  which  showed  not  only  good  education,  but  knowl- 
edge of  what  was  happening  and  intelligent  comprehension 
of  the  military  problems  to  be  solved." 

As  these  statements  were  made  by  the  Russian  command- 
ing general,  they  cannot  be  attributed  to  anti-Russian 
prejudice.  Even  if  we  allow  for  the  rankle  of  defeat  in  his 
mind,  it  is  clear  that,  whatever  may  be  said  for  the  stubborn 
courage  of  the  Russian  troops  as  a  whole,  especially  when 
defending  a  position,  there  was  no  such  esprit  de  corps  as 
there  was  in  the  Japanese  army.  The  apathy  of  the  army 
was  equalled  only  by  the  apathy  of  the  nation  at  home. 
General  Kuropatkin  quotes,  with  approval,  an  article  by 
Mr.  A.  Bilderling  in  the  Russian  Invalid,  in  1906,  in  which 
the  latter  said:  "In  a  conflict  between  two  peoples,  the 
things  of  most  importance  are  not  material  resources  but 
moral  strength,  exaltation  of  spirit,  and  patriotism.  .  .  . 
Every  soldier  (Japanese)  knew  that  the  whole  nation  stood 
behind  him.  With  us,  on  the  other  hand,  the  war  was  un- 
popular from  the  very  beginning.  Soldiers  were  hastily 
put  into  railway  trains,  and  when,  after  a  journey  that 
lasted  a  month,  they  alighted  in  Manchuria,  they  did  not 
know  in  what  country  they  were,  nor  whom  they  were  to 
fight,  nor  what  the  war  was  about.  Even  our  higher  com- 
manders went  to  the  front  unwillingly  and  from  a  mere 
sense  of  duty."  General  Kuropatkin  adds :  "  Out  of  the  tens 
of  thousands  of  students  who  were  then  living  in  idleness, 
only  a  handful  volunteered,  while  in  Japan  sons  of  the  most 
distinguished  citizens  were  striving  for  places  in  the  ranks. 
.  .  .  Leaders  of  the  revolutionary  party  strove  with  ex- 


172  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

traordinary  energy  to  multiply  our  chances  of  failure.  Per- 
sons who  sincerely  loved  their  country  gave  aid  to  Russia's 
enemies  by  expressing  the  opinion  in  the  press  that  the 
war  was  irrational,  and  by  criticising  the  mistakes  of  the 
government  that  had  failed  to  prevent  it.  Soldiers  of  the 
reserves,  when  called  into  active  service,  were  furnished  by 
the  anti-government  party  with  proclamations  intended  to 
prejudice  them  against  their  officers,  and  similar  procla- 
mations were  sent  to  the  army  in  Manchuria.  Firm  in 
spirit  though  Russians  might  be,  the  indifference  of  one 
class  of  the  population  and  the  seditious  incitement  of 
another  could  hardly  fail  to  have  upon  many  of  them  an 
influence  that  was  not  favorable  to  the  successful  prosecu- 
tion of  war."  The  Russian  commander-in-chief  is  surely 
a  competent  witness. 

The  effects  of  the  war  were  far-reaching.  Russia's  pres- 
tige suffered  an  eclipse;  Japan's  blazed  forth  with  new 
splendor.  For  the  first  time  in  modern  history  an  Asiatic 
nation  had  become  a  world-power  of  the  first  magnitude. 
Western  nations,  which  had  been  accustomed  to  do  their 
pleasure  in  the  Far  East,  and  to  count  on  nothing  more 
than  a  futile  opposition,  suddenly  found  that  the  day  of 
their  unchecked  aggressions  had  passed. 

Everywhere  Asia  plucked  up  courage.  It  had  regarded 
Russia  as  the  most  powerful  of  the  white  nations  and  Japan 
as  a  comparatively  small  island  empire  of  no  special  impor- 
tance. When,  therefore,  Asia  saw  the  most  dreaded  of 
Western  nations  so  easily  humbled  by  little  Japan,  people 
on  the  mainland  began  asking  one  another:  "Why  should 
we  longer  submit  to  this  arrogant  white  man?  If  the 
Japanese  can  defeat  the  Russians,  why  cannot  Chinese  and 
East  Indians  drive  out  the  foreigners  who  are  troubling 
them?"  Excited  Asia  did  not  understand  why  not,  and 
became  vainglorious.  The  White  Peril  suddenly  appeared 
less  menacing.  China  awaked  to  a  new  sense  of  unity  and 
power.  Anti-British  feeling  in  India  was  enormously  in- 
tensified. Even  Turkey  and  Persia  felt  the  thrill  of  Asiatic 
triumph  over  Europe.  Foreigners  in  the  Far  East  testified 


CAUSES  AND  EFFECTS  OF  RUSSIAN  DEFEAT     173 

to  the  general  change  in  attitude.  A  French  diplomat 
wrote  in  the  Deutsche  Revue:  "All  the  Asiatic  peoples  now 
recognize  that  the  axis  of  the  Asiatic  world  has  been  shifted. 
They  had  resigned  themselves  to  their  fate.  The  Japanese 
successes  struck  this  enervated  world  like  a  cannon  stroke, 
and  Siam,  which  is  led  by  British  sentiment;  India,  which 
is  under  England's  dominion;  the  Malay  Islands,  Java,  and 
Sumatra,  the  Anamites  of  Anam,  Tonquin,  and  Cochin- 
China,  pricked  up  their  ears.  Five  hundred  East  Indians 
at  once  set  out  to  attend  the  lectures  at  the  Japanese  uni- 
versities. Siam  concluded  a  compact  of  amity,  of  whose 
provisions  Europe  has  remained  ignorant,  with  Japan.  In 
Singapore,  Batavia,  Surabaya,  Saigon,  Hanoi,  and  Hai- 
phong the  Chinese  secret  societies  have  redoubled  their  pre- 
cautionary measures  and  their  activity.  China  has  opened 
its  doors  to  Japanese  traders,  Japanese  officials,  and  Japa- 
nese military  instructors.  In  French  Indo-China  it  was 
found  necessary  to  prohibit  Chinese  newspapers  and  to  or- 
der the  imprisonment  of  Chinese  and  Japanese  spies."1 

The  Hungarian  traveller  Arminius  Vaminbery  wrote  in 
the  same  periodical  on  the  reaction  of  the  Russian  defeat 
upon  the  Moslem  world  and  its  menace  to  the  West.  He 
reminded  Western  readers  that  ever  since  the  days  of  Ivan 
the  Terrible,  Mussulmans  had  regarded  Russia  as  the  arch- 
enemy of  their  faith,  a  scourge  of  Allah  whom  it  was  vain 
to  resist.  The  reports  of  Japanese  victories  "were  as 
startling  as  thunder  in  a  clear  sky  to  the  Moslem  nations 
of  Asia.  Shame  is  felt  at  the  fear  inspired  by  a  country 
which  has  proved  to  be  hollow  and  impotent,  but  still  more 
at  the  defeats  which  the  Moslem  nations  have  sustained 
at  the  hands  of  the  so  greatly  overrated  giant,  and  different 
writers  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  owing  to  the  ex- 
periences in  Manchuria  the  Moslems  may  look  forward  to 
a  more  hopeful  future." 

The  attitude  of  Western  nations  toward  Russia's  progress 
in  the  Far  East  presented  some  interesting  contrasts. 
Governments  observed  the  laws  of  neutrality,  but  the  press 

1  Quoted  in  the  American  monthly  Review  of  Reviews,  August,  1905. 


174  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

revealed  the  sympathies  of  the  people.  The  prevailing 
sentiment  in  continental  Europe  was  pro-Russian,  fear  of 
the  international  consequences  of  an  Asiatic  victory  over- 
coming hereditary  dislike  of  the  Slav.  British  sentiment 
was  more  friendly  to  Japan.  England  discerned  clearly 
enough  that  if  the  Slav  gained  his  coveted  mastery  in  the 
north  Pacific  he  would  have  an  access  of  power  and  pres- 
tige that  would  affect  the  balance  in  both  European  and 
Asiatic  international  relations  and  seriously  intensify  the 
menace  of  Russian  aggression  on  her  Indian  frontier  and  her 
possessions  in  China.  This  was  the  chief  consideration 
that  led  to  the  Anglo-Japanese  Alliance  of  January  30, 
1902.  This  alliance,  as  may  be  imagined,  was  not  received 
with  joy  in  Russia,  but  it  encouraged  the  jubilant  Japanese 
to  prepare  with  new  zest  for  the  war  which  all  saw  was  fast 
becoming  inevitable. 

American  feeling  was  decidedly  pro-Japanese.  Russia 
appeared  to  be  surprised  and  hurt  by  the  outspoken  friendli- 
ness of  Americans  for  Japan.  They  protested  that  white 
men  should  stand  together  against  yellow  men,  and  Chris- 
tians against  "heathens,"  reminded  us  of  Russian  sympathy 
during  the  American  Civil  War,  conjured  up  visions  of  sub- 
stantial benefits  which  would  accrue  from  Russian  victory, 
and  persistently  sought  to  arouse  feeling  against  Japan  by 
appealing  to  self-interest  and  race  prejudice.  Said  Count 
Cassini,  the  Russian  ambassador  to  the  United  States:  "It 
is  not  a  thoughtless  statement  that  were  Japan  to  obtain 
supreme  control  in  Manchuria  the  dominant  military  spirit 
of  the  Japanese  would  lead  them  to  organize  the  Chinese 
into  a  modern  army  of  such  proportions  that  Europe  and 
America  would  stand  aghast  at  this  menace  to  their  peace 
and  well-being.  With  a  population  of  more  than  430,000,- 
000  to  draw  from,  an  army  could  be  raised  that,  co-operating 
with  Japan,  might  with  a  reasonable  show  of  confidence 
defy  the  civilized  world.  You  in  America  should  pause  to 
contemplate  the  result  of  a  union  of  the  two  great  Mongol 
races — one  progressive,  aggressive,  alert,  overambitious, 
dreaming  dreams  of  standing  dominant  not  only  in  the 


CAUSES  AND  EFFECTS  OF  RUSSIAN  DEFEAT    175 

Far  East  but  in  the  councils  of  the  Powers;  the  other  imi- 
tative, easily  influenced,  ready  if  not  anxious  to  have  a 
stronger  hand  mould  its  flaccid  character  into  whatever 
shape  would  be  best  suited  to  cany  out  a  scheme  of  na- 
tional aggrandizement.  You  of  America,  as  well  as  we  of 
Europe,  have  this  to  confront.  It  is  not  Russia  alone  that 
the  danger  threatens,  but  the  whole  family  of  Caucasian 
nations."  * 

Count  Cassini  proceeded  to  plead  for  American  sym- 
pathy with  Russia  on  the  ground  that,  if  Russia  should  be 
victorious,  she  would  discriminate  in  commercial  matters 
"in  favor  of  the  United  States"  because  "Manchuria  would 
require  many  things  that  Russia  could  not  supply,"  while 
"in  this  country  [the  United  States]  are  made  the  very 
materials  that  would  find  a  ready  sale  among  the  people 
of  the  province."  "  On  the  one  hand  [with  Japan  victorious] 
stands  Manchuria  open  to  the  commerce  of  the  world — 
Japan  in  competition  with  the  United  States,  a  manufac- 
turer of  Japan  capable  of  making  the  goods  needed  in  Man- 
churia, and  of  making  them  cheaper  than  America  can 
make  them,  and  having  the  additional  advantage  of  short 
all-water  freight  rates.  On  the  other  hand  stands  Man- 
churia under  Russian  control,  with  a  friendly  hand  ex- 
tended to  the  United  States,  and  Japan  given  no  encour- 
agement. To  my  mind  the  conclusion  is  obvious." 

The  conclusion  was  indeed  "obvious,"  but  it  was  not,  as 
Count  Cassini  imagined,  that  the  United  States  should  sym- 
pathize with  Russia  for  the  ignoble  purpose  of  securing  a 
share  of  the  spoil.  Rather  was  it  obvious  that  in  principle 
Russia  stood  for  a  closed  Manchuria,  with  only  such  con- 
sideration for  other  nations  as  might  serve  her  own  inter- 
ests, and  that  it  would  be  safer  for  Americans  to  take  their 
chances  with  Japan.  They  knew  too  much  about  auto- 
cratic Russia  to  have  any  confidence  that  it  would  accord 
any  greater  freedom  of  intercourse  than  it  suited  her  pur- 
pose to  give.  In  spite  of  their  color,  geographical  location, 
and  nominal  faith,  the  Russian  autocrats  were  at  a  farther 

1  Article  in  the  North  American  Review,  May,  1904,  pp.  686-687. 


176  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

remove  from  the  spirit  of  western  Europe  and  the  United 
States  than  were  some  of  the  peoples  of  eastern  Asia.  It  is 
true  that  when  the  Russian  rules  an  uncivilized  people  he 
sometimes  benefits  them.  He  is  ruthless  and  bloody  in 
conquering,  and  he  introduces  an  order  which  is  better 
than  the  one  it  displaces;  but  any  praise  given  to  Russia 
on  this  account  should  take  into  consideration  the  standards 
of  comparison.  The  Asiatics  in  the  regions  ruled  by  Russia 
were  under  such  hopelessly  bad  governments  that  any 
change  at  all  was  for  the  better. 

Making  due  allowance  for  the  custom  of  all  warring  gov- 
ernments to  call  high  heaven  to  witness  to  the  rectitude  of 
their  intentions,  Americans  felt  that  Count  Katsura,  then 
Prime  Minister  of  Japan,  had  the  better  of  the  argument 
when  he  replied  to  the  Russian  plea  as  follows:  "The  ob- 
ject of  the  present  war,  on  the  part  of  Japan,  is  the  security 
of  the  Empire  and  the  permanent  peace  of  the  East.  Russia 
is,  and  if  allowed  to  be  will  continue  to  be,  the  great  dis- 
turber of  the  peace  of  the  East,  and  there  can  be  no  per- 
manent peace  until  she  is  put  in  bonds  which  she  cannot 
break.  The  position  of  Japan  is  closely  analogous  to  that 
of  ancient  Greece  in  her  contest  with  Persia;  a  contest  for 
the  security  of  Greece  and  the  permanent  peace  of  Europe. 
Japan  is  Greece  and  Russia  is  Persia.  The  war  is  not  a 
war  for  the  supremacy  of  race  over  race,  or  of  religion  over 
religion.  With  differences  of  race  or  religion  it  has  nothing 
to  do;  and  it  is  carried  on  in  the  interests  of  justice,  human- 
ity, and  the  commerce  and  civilization  of  the  world."1 

The  triumph  of  Japan  marked  the  beginning  of  a  new 
epoch  not  only  for  Japan,  but  for  Korea,  China,  and  proba- 
bly also  for  the  world.  It  changed  the  whole  complexion 
of  Far  Eastern  politics.  It  gave  Japan  an  acknowledged 
place  among  world-powers  of  the  first  rank.  It  seriously 
impaired  Russian  prestige  everywhere.  It  meant  the  re- 
construction of  Korea  under  Japanese  leadership;  and  it 
dissipated  the  fear  that  the  vast  populations  of  the  Far 

1  From  an  interview  with  the  Reverend  William  Imbrie,  D.D.,  of  Tokyo, 
which  he  was  authorized  to  publish  in  the  United  States. 


CAUSES  AND  EFFECTS  OF  RUSSIAN  DEFEAT     177 

East,  numbering  more  than  one-third  of  the  human  race, 
might  fall  under  the  baleful  influence  of  Russian  absolutism. 
I  have  no  disposition  to  exalt  Japan  at  the  expense  of  Rus- 
sia. But  since  Japan  happened  to  be  the  nation  to  resist 
the  Russian  advance  in  the  Far  East,  one  may  call  attention 
to  the  historical  fact  that  Japan  had  made  more  real  progress 
in  five  decades  of  contact  with  the  Western  world  than 
Russia  had  made  in  five  centuries.  Japan  was  far  from 
perfect,  but  it  was  better  for  the  interests  of  mankind  that 
Korea  and  lower  Manchuria  should  develop  under  Japa- 
nese influence  than  under  Russian. 

In  a  later  chapter  I  must  regretfully  record  a  strengthen- 
ing of  autocratic  tendencies  in  Japan,  and  in  another  vol- 
ume I  have  described  the  remarkable  revolution  in  Russia;1 
but  contrasting  the  two  nations  as  they  stood  with  their 
governments,  methods,  and  ideals  in  the  first  decade  of  this 
century,  it  was  painfully  clear  that  the  influence  of  Russia 
in  the  Far  East  was  a  menace  not  only  to  northern  Asia 
but  to  the  world,  which  is  profoundly  concerned  by  the 
forces  which  dominate  these  rising  nations.  It  is  hardly 
conceivable  that  a  triumphant  Russian  autocracy  would 
have  permitted  China  to  become  a  republic,  and  when  that 
autocracy  itself  fell,  in  1917,  the  sudden  collapse  of  Russian 
rule  in  eastern  Asia  would  have  plunged  China  and  Korea 
into  chaos.  Japan  would  then  have  been  compelled  to 
undertake  the  task  of  restoring  order,  but  with  the  loss  of 
at  least  a  dozen  years  of  time,  during  which  many  condi- 
tions would  have  become  worse  and  the  difficulties  greatly 
multiplied.  A  free,  orderly,  and  enlightened  Russia  would 
be  a  blessing  not  only  to  the  Far  East,  but  to  the  world. 
But  there  was  no  such  Russia  in  1905,  and  one  grieves  to 
say  that  while  the  Russia  of  to-day  is  nominally  free,  it  is 
neither  orderly  nor  enlightened,  for  Russia  has  dethroned 
the  Czar  only  to  enthrone  fanatical  Bolsheviki  Socialists, 
who  cannot  even  guide  their  own  country  aright,  to  say 
nothing  of  other  countries. 

1  Russia  in  Transformation. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE  PORTSMOUTH  TREATY  AND  THE  ANGLO- 
JAPANESE  CONVENTION 

THE  annihilation  of  the  Russian  fleet  brought  the  war  to 
its  culmination.  Each  side  was  now  ready  to  consider 
terms  of  peace.  Russia  had  lost  all  the  ships  that  she  could 
prudently  send  to  the  Far  East.  Her  army  had  been  dis- 
astrously defeated,  and  the  single  track  Trans-Siberian 
Railway  could  not  transport  enough  troops  and  munitions 
for  adequate  reinforcements.  Russia,  too,  was  feeling  the 
pressure  of  financial  necessity.  Her  natural  resources  were 
great,  but  they  were  unable  to  stand  the  strain  of  continuing 
the  struggle.  Her  foreign  loans  on  account  of  the  war 
aggregated  $335,000,000;  her  internal  loans  were  $100,000,- 
000;  and  her  outstanding  paper-money  issue  was  $600,000,- 
000.  The  war  had  cost  Russia  nearly  if  not  quite  $1,500,- 
000,000.  Moreover,  the  government  was  facing  a  revolu- 
tion of  ominous  portent,  and  needed  freedom  from  foreign 
complications  in  order  that  it  might  be  able  to  turn  its 
attention  to  a  home  situation  which  was  menacing  the 
stability  of  the  throne.  The  common  people  had  never 
regarded  the  war  with  favor.  They  deemed  it  a  war  of  the 
grand  ducal  party,  but  its  sorrows  had  pressed  heavily 
upon  them.  Every  village  had  lost  husbands  and  fathers 
and  sons,  and  murmurs  of  discontent  were  becoming  loud 
and  insistent. 

Japan  had  even  more  cogent  reasons  for  peace.  The  war 
map  was  altogether  in  her  favor,  but  a  continuance  of  the 
struggle  would  have  involved  grave  risk.  Russia  had  little 
more  to  lose.  Her  home  territory  was  not  involved.  Her 
army  in  Manchuria  included  many  Poles,  Finns,  and  revolu- 
tionists whom  the  governing  autocrats  were  quite  willing 
to  have  killed  off  so  that  they  could  not  return  home  to 
increase  the  popular  discontent.  While  the  Russians  had 

178 


THE  PORTSMOUTH  TREATY  179 

no  navy  left  worth  mentioning,  they  had  559,000  soldiers  in 
Manchuria  and  the  Primorsk  or  Pacific  Province.  Sixty- 
four  thousand  of  these  were  in  hospitals,  but  the  remainder 
constituted  a  formidable  army  which  was  inured  to  war, 
and  whose  new  and  capable  commander,  General  Linevitch, 
was  eager  to  avenge  the  defeats  of  his  predecessor,  General 
Kuropatkin.  Russia  was  undoubtedly  in  a  bad  way,  but 
if  she  were  forced  to  go  on,  her  superior  resources  in  men 
and  money,  her  food-supplies  in  the  flour-mills  and  stock- 
yards at  Harbin,  "that  great  stomach  of  the  war,"  and  her 
unbroken  control  of  the  Trans-Siberian  Railway  from  Si- 
beria and  Russia  would  have  enabled  her  in  time  to  pull 
herself  together  and  wage  a  long  war  more  easily  than  the 
Japanese.  The  latter  had  defeated  the  Russians  in  every 
battle,  but  they  had  done  so  at  fearful  cost.  Liao-yang  and 
Mukden  were  fiercely  contested  battles,  and  the  slopes  of 
Port  Arthur  had  been  turned  into  Japanese  shambles  by 
the  valor  of  their  Russian  defenders.  Japan's  victory  had 
not  been  so  easily  won  as  to  make  the  thought  of  try- 
ing it  again  particularly  attractive.  Mr.  F.  A.  McKenzie, 
the  well-known  war  correspondent,  said  that  there  was  re- 
markable agreement  among  his  colleagues  with  the  differ- 
ent armies  that  the  Japanese  in  striking  their  great  blow 
at  Mukden  practically  exhausted  their  strength,1  and  George 
Kennan  declared  that  when  peace  negotiations  were  begun 
Russia  had  100,000  more  troops  in  Manchuria  than  Japan, 
and  that  the  Japanese  General  Staff  did  not  believe  that 
it  could  defeat  General  Linevitch  and  carry  the  war  north- 
ward without  a  reinforcement,  which  it  would  be  difficult 
for  Japan  to  supply,  and  which  the  government  had  neither 
the  arms  nor  the  money  to  equip.  In  these  circumstances 
it  would  not  have  been  a  light  thing  to  face  further  battles 
with  a  still  formidable  and  determined  enemy  which  had 
learned  much  by  experience,  and  which  was  willing  to  try 
the  fortunes  of  another  contest. 
There  were,  too,  possible  complications  with  other  na- 

1  The  Unveiled  East,  pp.  105-106. 

*  Article  in  The  Outloek,  December  30,  1911. 


180  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

tions  which  might  diminish  the  results  of  the  victory  already 
obtained.  The  Japanese  did  not  forget  that  they  had  cap- 
tured Port  Arthur  once  before,  in  the  war  with  China  in 
1895,  and  that  they  had  been  compelled  to  relinquish  it 
by  a  combination  of  European  Powers.  It  was  not  proba- 
ble that  Europe  would  again  interfere,  as  it  had  learned  to 
respect  the  prowess  of  the  Japanese,  and  had  been  led  to  fear 
the  reflex  effect  of  interference.  But  European  diplomacy 
was  believed  to  be  prolific  in  unexpected  schemes.  It  ap- 
peared prudent,  therefore,  to  accept  the  substantial  results 
that  Russia  was  ready  to  acknowledge  rather  than  to  incur 
the  risk  of  lessening  them  by  continuing  the  war  under  con- 
ditions that  might  be  more  favorable  to  Russia. 

Japan  hesitated  to  bring  upon  herself  the  world  odium 
that  would  have  resulted  from  a  continuance  of  the  war 
which  all  men  now  thought  should  stop.  Mankind  had 
become  sensitive  to  bloodshed  and,  knowing  nothing  of 
the  greater  horrors  of  the  coming  European  War,  was  ap- 
palled by  the  carnage  in  Manchuria.  Humanity  virtually 
said  to  Japan:  "After  having  obtained  your  avowed  ob- 
jects in  the  war,  you  should  be  satisfied."  The  youngest 
of  present-day  Powers,  Japan  is  not  indifferent  to  the 
opinion  of  other  nations,  and  this  was  deemed  a  good  oppor- 
tunity to  convince  the  world  that  Japan  could  be  as  wise  in 
peace  as  she  was  efficient  in  war.  Indemnity  did  not  ap- 
peal to  the  Japanese  as  an  adequate  reason  for  rejecting 
terms  of  peace.  While  not  unmindful  of  financial  advan- 
tages, they  can  hardly  be  called  a  mercenary  people.  The 
Samurai,  who  form  the  bulk  of  the  fighting  class,  are  chival- 
rous in  spirit  and  with  a  high  sense  of  personal  honor. 
They  will  fight  to  the  death  for  their  Emperor,  but  they 
would  consider  money  an  ignoble  thing  to  die  for. 

The  cost  of  continuing  the  war  would  have  been  enor- 
mous. Japan  had  stood  the  financial  strain  unexpectedly 
well,  but  she  could  not  have  stood  it  much  longer.  The 
patriotism  of  the  Japanese  is  equal  to  more  exacting  de- 
mands than  that  of  most  other  peoples,  and  they  were  still 
willing  to  fight.  But  taxes  had  trebled  since  the  outbreak 


THE  PORTSMOUTH  TREATY  181 

of  hostilities,  and  had  become  a  grievous  burden  for  a  poor 
people.  The  budget  presented  to  the  Diet  of  1906  by  the 
Minister  of  Finance  showed  that  the  war,  including  interest 
on  the  war  debt,  had  cost  Japan  approximately  yen  2,204,- 
000,000,  and  the  interest  charges  were  nearly  twice  the 
revenues  of  the  government  a  decade  before.  Bad  weather 
had  seriously  lessened  the  rice-crop,  and  the  price  of  food 
had  reached  alarming  proportions.  Distress  would  stare 
the  nation  in  the  face  if  the  war  continued.  It  is  true  that 
Koretiyo  Takahashi,  financial  commissioner  of  Japan  in 
London,  is  said  to  have  told  an  enterprising  newspaper  re- 
porter that  Japan  had  $175,000,000  untouched  in  England, 
Germany,  and  the  United  States,  and  that  if  peace  had  not 
been  concluded  his  government  could  have  raised  an  addi- 
tional internal  loan  of  $100,000,000  to  prosecute  the  war.1 
But  this  pronouncement  was  regarded  as  purely  "diplomatic." 
Whatever  desperation  might  have  prompted,  Japan  was 
plainly  near  the  end  of  her  resources.  The  financial  as  well 
as  the  political  and  humanitarian  interests  of  the  world 
were  strongly  for  peace,  and  they  had  the  advantage  of 
being  in  a  position  to  press  their  views.  Each  of  the  con- 
tending nations  was  compelled  to  borrow,  and  bankers  did 
not  care  to  lend  more  for  the  continuance  of  a  conflict 
which  might  end  in  the  bankruptcy  of  one  or  both  of  the 
debtors,  and  which  had  already  disturbed  the  commercial 
and  monetary  interests  of  the  world. 

Other  governments  added  their  influence  to  the  counsels 
for  peace.  France  and  Germany,  who  were  more  or  less 
openly  in  sympathy  with  the  Slav,  saw  that  the  time  had 
come  to  stop,  and  so  advised  Russia.  The  German  Em- 
peror and  the  Russian  Czar  had  a  mysterious  meeting  on 
the  former's  private  yacht.  Sovereigns  do  not  confer  in 
the  presence  of  newspaper  reporters;  but  no  one,  except 
those  who  were  compelled  for  diplomatic  reasons  to  do  so, 
denied  that  the  subject  of  the  conference  was  the  war,  and 
that  the  German  war  lord  gave  some  sound  advice  to  his 
weaker  friend;  for  every  intelligent  man  in  Christendom 

1  Inter-view  in  the  New  York  Tribune,  September  1,  1905. 


182  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

probably  had  more  accurate  knowledge  as  to  the  actual 
progress  of  events  than  the  unhappy  Czar,  who  knew  only 
what  the  court  cabal  permitted  to  reach  him.  Great  Britain, 
meantime,  was  counselling  Japan  to  make  peace.  The 
British  had  no  interest  in  the  prosecution  of  the  conflict 
merely  for  a  money  or  territorial  consideration  after  the 
real  ends  of  the  war  had  been  attained,  and  their  special 
relations  to  Japan  through  the  Anglo-Japanese  Convention 
of  1902  might  prove  embarrassing  if  the  strife  increased  in 
bitterness.  This  convention  was  designed  to  strengthen 
each  of  the  contracting  parties  against  Russia  as  their 
common  danger.  It  provided  that  if  either  Japan  or  Eng- 
land, in  defense  of  their  respective  Korean  interests,  should 
become  involved  in  war  with  any  other  Power,  the  other 
party  to  the  contract  "will  maintain  a  strict  neutrality  and 
use  its  efforts  to  prevent  other  Powers  from  joining  in  hos- 
tilities against  its  ally,"  but  that  if  any  other  Power  or 
Powers  do  so  join  in  hostilities,  then  the  other  contracting 
party  will  join  its  ally."  Thereupon  France  and  Russia 
promptly  made  an  agreement  to  stand  together. 

If  it  had  not  been  for  these  compacts  the  Russia-Japan 
War  might  have  set  half  the  world  on  fire.  More  than  one 
nation  might  have  helped  Russia  if  it  had  not  been  for  the 
knowledge  that  such  help  would  have  brought  Great 
Britain  and  France  into  the  melSe.  The  cabinets  of  Chris- 
endom  had  been  nervously  apprehensive  from  the  beginning 
that  the  interference  of  China  on  Japan's  behalf  might  force 
France  to  keep  her  treaty  promise  to  fight  with  Russia  hi 
the  event  of  two  nations  uniting  against  her.  Then  Eng- 
land's treaty  with  Japan  would  have  embroiled  her,  and 
Europe  as  well  as  Asia  would  have  been  in  tumult.  The 
Dogger  Bank  incident  in  the  North  Sea,  in  which  Rojest- 
vensky's  fleet  fired  on  some  British  fishing-smacks,  illus- 
trated the  tension  everywhere,  and  the  imminence  of  war 
at  that  time  between  Great  Britain  and  Russia  made  the 
rest  of  the  world  extremely  nervous.  The  whole  situation 
was  full  of  dynamite,  and  everybody  wanted  the  conflict 
to  end  before  any  more  of  it  exploded. 


THE  PORTSMOUTH  TREATY  183 

In  these  circumstances  it  was  apparent  to  the  whole 
world  that  the  strategic  moment  to  discuss  terms  of  peace 
had  arrived.  The  only  question  was:  Who  should  take  the 
initiative  ?  Pride  kept  each  of  the  combatants  from  making 
overtures.  The  victorious  Japanese  felt  that  any  advances 
on  their  part  would  be  construed  as  a  confession  of  inability 
to  fight  longer,  and  the  defeated  Russians  felt  that  to  sue 
for  peace  would  be  to  drink  the  dregs  of  the  cup  of  humilia- 
tion. No  European  nation  was  in  a  position  to  act,  as  the 
leading  governments  were  understood  to  be  in  sympathy 
with  one  or  the  other  of  the  combatants.  In  these  circum- 
stances all  signs  pointed  to  the  United  States,  whose  popular 
sentiment  was  known  to  be  rather  favorable  to  Japan,  but 
whose  government  had  carefully  maintained  neutrality, 
and  was  credited  with  a  larger  measure  of  disinterestedness 
than  any  of  the  European  governments.  While  everybody 
felt  that  somebody  ought  to  move,  and  each  was  waiting 
for  some  one  else,  President  Roosevelt  broke  through  diplo- 
matic formalities  and  addressed  an  identical  note  to  the 
Japanese  and  Russian  Governments,  June  7,  1905:  "The 
President  feels  that  the  time  has  come,  when,  in  the  inter- 
est of  all  mankind,  he  must  endeavor  to  see  if  it  is  not  pos- 
sible to  bring  to  an  end  the  terrible  and  lamentable  conflict 
now  being  waged.  .  .  .  The  President  accordingly  urges 
the  Russian  and  Japanese  Governments,  not  only  for  their 
own  sakes  but  in  the  interest  of  the  whole  civilized  world, 
to  open  direct  negotiations  for  peace  with  each  other.  ..." 

Japan  promptly  expressed  its  willingness  to  enter  into 
negotiations  for  peace.  Russia  also  answered  affirmatively 
but  in  language  whose  sincerity  was  suspected  by  Japan. 
However  the  difficulties  were  overcome  and  plenipotenti- 
aries were  appointed.  Japan  designated  as  her  represen- 
tatives Baron  Jutaro  Komura,  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs, 
and  Mr.  Kogoro  Takahira,  Minister  to  the  United  States. 
Russia  was  tardy,  as  usual,  finally  appointing  M.  Nelidov 
and  M.  Muraviev,  who  were  soon  replaced  by  Count  Ser- 
gius  Witte,  former  Privy  Councillor  and  Minister  of  Finance, 
and  Baron  Romanovitch  Rosen,  who  had  just  been  ap- 


184  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

pointed  Ambassador  to  the  United  States.  These  selections 
were  favorably  regarded  by  the  world.  Baron  Komura 
was  educated  in  America,  at  Harvard  University,  and  dur- 
ing his  long  diplomatic  career  had  been  Minister  to  Korea, 
China,  and  Russia.  Count  Witte,  though  cordially  hated 
by  the  Grand  Ducal  party  in  Russia,  was  a  man  respected 
not  only  for  ability  but  for  honesty.  Baron  Rosen  had 
served  eight  years  as  Secretary  of  the  Russian  Embassy  in 
Washington,  and  also  as  Secretary  of  Legation  and  Minister 
in  Tokyo.  Physically,  the  Japanese  and  Russian  plenipo- 
tentiaries presented  a  contrast  not  unlike  that  typified  by 
their  respective  nations.  The  Russian  Witte  was  of  huge 
bulk,  over  six  feet  in  height  and  over  two  hundred  pounds 
in  weight,  while  the  Japanese  Komura  was  but  little  over 
five  feet  in  height  and  weighing  only  about  one  hundred 
pounds.  But  events  proved  that  in  alertness  and  strength 
of  intellect  the  small  Japanese  was  no  whit  the  inferior  of 
the  ponderous  Russian.  After  some  dickering  America 
was  accepted  by  both  parties  as  the  place  of  meeting,  and 
the  plenipotentiaries  began  their  sessions  August  8  at  the 
government  navy-yard  near  Portsmouth,  New  Hampshire. 
There  was  intense  curiosity  on  the  part  of  the  Russians, 
as  well  as  on  the  part  of  the  world,  to  know  what  terms  the 
Japanese  would  impose.  Baron  Komura  submitted  twelve 
in  writing  at  an  early  session.  The  next  day  Count  Witte 
submitted  the  Russian  reply,  protesting  against  certain  of 
the  terms.  Baron  Komura  suavely  proposed  that  the  dis- 
cussion of  the  disputed  terms  be  temporarily  deferred, 
and  that  an  effort  be  made  to  ascertain  on  how  many  of 
the  others  agreement  could  be  reached.  The  articles  were 
then  taken  up  in  this  way,  and  it  soon  became  apparent 
that  the  Russians  would  accept  eight  of  the  Japanese  terms, 
but  that  the  remaining  four  would  be  rejected.  The  Japa- 
nese insisted,  but  the  Russians  remained  stubborn,  and  a 
deadlock  resulted.  It  looked  for  a  time  as  if  the  negotia- 
tions would  end  in  failure.  The  cables  between  Ports- 
mouth and  the  governments  concerned  were  kept  hot  with 
messages,  but  neither  side  would  yield. 


THE  PORTSMOUTH  TREATY  185 

Then  President  Roosevelt  intervened.  From  a  diplo- 
matic view-point  it  was  rather  an  extraordinary  thing  to 
do.  But  he  seldom  allowed  convention  to  limit  his  course, 
and  his  independent  position  made  it  possible  for  him  to  do 
without  suspicion  of  interested  motives  what  no  European 
monarch  could  have  done.  What  cabled  communications 
he  had  with  St.  Petersburg,  Tokyo,  and  other  capitals  were 
carefully  guarded  from  the  public;  but  the  remarks  of  the 
German  Emperor  after  the  peace  conference  had  closed 
indicated  that  there  was  considerable  consultation.  At 
any  rate,  there  were  undoubted  signs  that  the  real  centre 
of  negotiations  was  transferred  from  Portsmouth  to  Presi- 
dent Roosevelt's  summer  home  at  Oyster  Bay.  Baron 
Rosen  quietly  slipped  away  from  Portsmouth  and  had  a 
long  conference  with  the  President,  returning  as  quietly  to 
Portsmouth.  The  channel  of  communication  with  the 
Japanese  was  Baron  Kaneko,  a  former  member  of  the 
Japanese  Cabinet,  who  was  known  to  be  high  in  the  con- 
fidence of  the  Mikado  and  Elder  Statesmen,  and  who  had 
been  for  some  time  in  the  United  States.  There  had  been 
much  speculation  regarding  his  presence  in  America  through- 
out the  war.  While  he  was  affable  with  every  one  he  had 
the  proverbial  reticence  of  the  Japanese  in  important 
matters,  and  newspaper  men  never  could  learn  anything 
from  him.  Although  he  was  not  one  of  the  peace  plenipo- 
tentiaries, he  visited  President  Roosevelt  no  less  than  six 
times  during  the  sessions  of  the  Portsmouth  conference. 
The  Baron  suavely  told  newspaper  reporters  that  his  visits 
to  the  President  were  purely  personal,  as  he  and  Mr.  Roose- 
velt had  been  friends  since  their  association  as  fellow 
students  at  Harvard  University,  and  that  he  had  not  sent 
a  single  cable  message  to  the  Mikado  or  to  Prince  Ito 
since  the  conference  opened.  Mr.  Sato,  the  spokesman  for 
the  Japanese  plenipotentiaries,  added  his  disclaimer  to  that 
of  Baron  Kaneko,  observing  that  if  the  President  of  the 
United  States  had  any  communications  to  make,  he  would 
naturally  have  made  them  through  official  channels.  This 
sounded  plausible,  but  the  public  was  not  convinced.  The 


186  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

Japanese  are  past  masters  in  the  art  of  secrecy,  and  there 
were  various  ways  by  which  the  astute,  self-effacing  Baron 
could  have  transmitted  his  information  to  the  right  parties. 
At  any  rate  it  was  apparent  that  the  plenipotentiaries  at 
Portsmouth  were  simply  marking  time  while  the  main 
issue  was  being  settled  somewhere  else. 

It  looked  for  a  time  as  if  nothing  could  be  accomplished. 
The  Japanese  insisted  upon  their  terms,  and  the  Russians 
declared  that  to  concede  the  four  in  question  would  destroy 
their  prestige  in  both  Europe  and  Asia,  and  make  serious 
trouble  at  home,  and  that  it  was  their  inflexible  determina- 
tion to  continue  the  war  rather  than  yield  to  such  humiliating 
conditions.  August  29,  to  the  surprise  and  relief  of  the 
world,  Baron  Komura  withdrew  the  three  Japanese  de- 
mands relating  to  indemnity,  Russia's  naval  power  in  the 
Far  East,  and  the  interned  ships,  and  proposed  a  division 
of  the  Island  of  Saghalien.  The  overjoyed  Russians  in- 
stantly assented,  and  the  long  suspense  was  over.  As 
Count  Witte  returned  to  his  hotel  a  throng  of  excited  news- 
paper men  pressed  about  him  and  called  out :  "  Does  Russia 
pay  an  indemnity?"  "Pas  un  sou,  et  la  moitie*  de  Sa- 
khaline"  (Not  a  sou  and  the  half  of  Saghalien)  was  the 
jubilant  reply.  The  formal  draft  of  the  treaty  was  made 
by  Mr.  Henry  Willard  Dennison,  the  American  who  was 
for  many  years  the  legal  adviser  of  Japan,  and  Mr.  Frederick 
de  Martens,  who  sustained  similar  relation  to  the  Russian 
Foreign  Office.  September  5,  in  the  presence  of  all  the 
envoys  and  their  suites,  and  a  few  invited  Americans, 
Count  Witte  and  Baron  Komura  affixed  their  signatures. 
The  profound  silence  during  that  supreme  moment  was  then 
broken  by  a  battery  salute  of  nineteen  guns,  the  ringing  of 
the  church-bells  in  Portsmouth,  and  the  screaming  of  all 
the  steam-whistles  in  the  harbor.  Mutual  felicitations 
were  exchanged  by  the  plenipotentiaries  while  telegraph 
and  cable  sped  the  tidings  to  every  part  of  the  world. 
Copies  of  the  treaty  were  transmitted  to  the  governments 
in  Tokyo  and  St.  Petersburg,  and  were  formally  signed  by 
both  monarchs  October  14. 


THE  PORTSMOUTH  TREATY  187 

The  salient  points  of  this  treaty  were  as  follows:  Japan 
ratified  Russia's  lease  of  the  trunk-line  railway  across 
Manchuria  to  Vladivostok.  Russia  recognized  Japanese 
preponderating  influence  in  Korea,  agreed  to  respect  the 
administrative  entity  of  Manchuria  and  to  limit  her  claim 
to  police  the  Manchurian  Railway,  surrendered  the  Chinese 
Eastern  Railway  from  Kwan-cheng-tze  Pass  to  Port 
Arthur,  and  acknowledged  Japan's  title  to  Port  Arthur  and 
Dalny  and  to  that  portion  of  Saghalien  south  of  the  50th 
parallel  of  latitude.  Both  nations  agreed  to  evacuate  Man- 
churia and  to  uphold  the  open-door  policy  in  it,  and  each 
was  to  reimburse  the  other  for  the  care  of  imprisoned  sol- 
diers, sailors,  and  citizens. 

The  first  thought  of  the  world  was  that  the  Japanese  had 
yielded  their  ground,  and  surprise  was  general.  Reflection, 
however,  showed  that  Japan  had  taken  the  prudent  course. 
She  had  obtained  all  that  she  had  fought  for,  and  more. 
There  would  have  been  no  war  at  all  if  Russia  at  the  outset 
had  conceded  Japan's  demands  regarding  Korea  and  Man- 
churia. By  the  terms  of  peace  Japan  not  only  eliminated 
Russia  from  Korea  and  southern  Manchuria,  but  obtained 
for  herself  Dalny,  Port  Arthur,  and  the  Chinese  Eastern 
Railway.  It  is  doubtful  whether  the  Japanese  really  ex- 
pected to  obtain  more  than  they  did.  The  surrender  of  the 
Russian  ships  that  had  taken  refuge  in  neutral  ports,  and 
the  limitation  of  Russia's  naval  power  in  the  Far  East  were 
not  reasonable  demands.  It  was  incredible  that  Russia 
should  submit  to  dictation  as  to  how  many  ships  she  should 
have  in  her  own  ports.  The  demand  for  Saghalien  had  a 
better  basis,  but  the  compromise  agreed  upon  was  compara- 
tively easy.  Japan  had  ceded  it  to  Russia  in  1875  when 
its  resources  were  little  understood  and  its  relation  to 
future  complications  had  not  been  foreseen.  It  is  a  more 
considerable  island  than  is  commonly  supposed,  being  670 
miles  long,  and  having  an  area  of  about  25,000  square 
miles,  nearly  that  of  Ireland.  It  has  extensive  forests, 
vast  beds  of  coal  and  iron  ore,  rich  deposits  of  oil,  and  its 
coasts  and  rivers  teem  with  salmon,  herring,  and  other 


188  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

food-fish.  Its  location,  twenty-five  miles  from  the  main- 
land, and  thirty  miles  from  Japan,  gives  it  large  strategic 
value.  The  Japanese  were  not  thinking  so  much  of  com- 
mercial and  military  advantages  in  1875  as  they  were  in 
1905,  and  they  were  determined  that  so  strategic  a  base 
should  no  longer  remain  in  the  possession  of  a  rival  power. 
They  had  little  zeal  for  the  northern  part,  which  is  bleak, 
rocky,  and  ice-bound.  It  is  of  some  use  to  Russia  on  ac- 
count of  its  relation  to  the  mouth  of  the  Amur  River,  and 
as  a  convict  colony,  but  it  is  of  little  value  for  anything  else. 
Japan  secured  the  southern  half  whose  climate  is  made 
more  salubrious  by  the  Japan  Current,  which  includes  the 
coal,  iron,  and  oil  deposits,  which  has  the  fisheries  that 
Japan  needs  both  for  revenue  and  for  food,  and  which  has 
vital  relations  to  the  naval  control  of  La  Perouse  Strait  and 
the  Japan  Sea.  With  this  half  of  the  island  and  both  sides 
of  the  Korea  Strait,  Russia  cannot  get  in  or  out  of  Vladi- 
vostok without  the  consent  of  Japan. 

As  for  indemnity,  Japan  really  got  tne  equivalent  of  an 
enormous  one  in  Korea,  Dalny,  Port  Arthur,  the  Chinese 
Eastern  Railway,  valuable  fisheries,  the  control  of  southern 
Manchuria,  and  prestige  in  China.  Her  wildest  dreams 
never  compassed  so  much  at  the  outbreak  of  the  war.  Of 
course  she  at  first  pressed  for  indemnity.  It  is  the  custom 
in  all  bargaining,  particularly  in  the  Orient,  to  ask  more  than 
one  expects  to  get.  Americans  often  do  this,  and  Orientals 
always  do.  The  method  is  dear  to  the  Eastern  mind  as  it 
leaves  room  for  large  apparent  concessions  without  making 
any  real  sacrifice.  The  Japanese  of  the  higher  class  are 
less  disposed  to  haggle  over  a  trade  than  most  Asiatics, 
but  they  were  far  too  shrewd  to  begin  a  diplomatic  nego- 
tiation with  their  minimum  terms.  By  stoutly  insisting 
for  a  time  on  what  they  never  really  expected  to  get,  they 
obtained  the  important  things  which  they  were  actually 
after. 

Another  reason,  which  probably  had  as  much  influence 
with  Japan  as  any  other,  perhaps  as  much  as  all  others 
combined,  was  the  secret  completion  of  another  treaty  with 


THE  PORTSMOUTH  TREATY  189 

Great  Britain.  The  Anglo-Japanese  Convention  of  Jan- 
uary 30,  1902,  had  greatly  increased  Japan's  prestige,  and 
had  assured  her  of  the  powerful  assistance  of  England  in 
the  event  of  any  other  Power  coming  to  the  assistance  of 
Russia.  This  convention  was  for  five  years  and  therefore 
had  two  years  more  to  run.  Both  Japan  and  England  felt 
that  the  time  had  come  for  a  closer  and  more  effective  alli- 
ance, and  without  waiting  for  the  expiration  of  the  treaty, 
a  new  one  was  concluded  for  a  further  period  of  ten  years, 
with  the  agreement,  as  hi  the  former  case,  that  even  then 
it  should  continue  in  force  until  a  year  after  one  of  the 
contracting  parties  should  notify  the  other  of  its  desire 
to  end  it.  The  object  of  this  momentous  convention, 
which  was  signed  August  12,  1905,  was  stated  in  the  pre- 
amble to  be  "(A)  Consolidation  and  the  maintenance  of 
general  peace  hi  the  regions  of  eastern  Asia  and  India; 
(B)  The  preservation  of  the  common  interests  of  all  the 
Powers  in  China  by  insuring  the  independence  and  integ- 
rity of  the  Chinese  Empire  and  the  principle  of  equal  op- 
portunities for  the  commerce  and  industry  of  all  nations  in 
China;  (C)  The  maintenance  of  the  territorial  rights  of  the 
high  contracting  parties  in  the  regions  of  eastern  Asia  and 
of  India,  and  the  defense  of  their  special  interests  hi  the 
said  regions."  Article  II  provided  that  "if  by  reason  of  an 
unprovoked  attack  or  aggressive  action,  wherever  arising, 
on  the  part  of  any  other  Power  or  Powers,  either  con- 
tractor be  involved  in  war  in  defense  of  its  territorial  rights 
or  special  interests  mentioned  in  the  preamble,  the  other 
contractor  shall  at  once  come  to  the  assistance  of  its  ally, 
and  both  parties  will  conduct  war  in  common  and  make 
peace  in  mutual  agreement  with  any  Power  or  Powers  in- 
volved in  such  war."  Article  III  recognized  Japan's  "para- 
mount political,  military,  and  economic  interests  in  Korea," 
and  Article  IV  Great  Britain's  "special  interests  in  all  that 
concerns  the  security  of  the  Indian  frontier,"  and  Article 
VI  declared  that  "in  the  matter  of  the  present  war  between 
Japan  and  Russia,  Great  Britain  will  continue  to  maintain 
strict  neutrality  unless  another  Power  or  Powers  join  in 


190  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

hostilities  against  Japan,  in  which  case  Great  Britain  will 
come  to  the  assistance  of  Japan,  will  conduct  war  in  com- 
mon, and  will  make  peace  in  mutual  agreement  with  Japan." 
This  treaty  was  far-reaching  in  its  significance.  It  meant 
peace  in  eastern  Asia,  relief  of  the  British  from  anxiety 
regarding  Russian  aggressions  upon  their  Indian  frontier, 
and  relief  of  the  Japanese  from  anxiety  regarding  further 
Russian  advance  in  Manchuria.  It  virtually  guaranteed 
the  integrity  of  China  against  further  aggressions  by  Russia, 
Germany,  and  France,  and  kept  open  the  door  for  the 
world's  trade  with  that  populous  country.  More  than  this, 
it  was  tantamount  to  an  offensive  and  defensive  alliance 
between  the  greatest  naval  Power  of  Europe  and  the  great- 
est military  Power  of  Asia,  thus  securing  to  Japan  the  posi- 
tion that  she  had  won,  giving  her  a  free  hand  in  the  develop- 
ment of  Korea,  and  insuring  that  if  other  Powers  should 
make  war  against  either  Great  Britain  or  Japan  they  would 
be  confronted  by  both  Powers.  As  soon  as  the  Emperor  of 
Germany  learned  of  this  treaty,  he  saw  its  bearing  upon 
some  of  his  cherished  plans,  and  he  began  making  a  hurried 
effort  to  form  a  league  between  Germany,  France,  and 
Russia.  These  governments  shared  his  perturbation,  but 
the  Russians  had  their  hands  full  with  their  own  affairs,  and 
France  had  recently  entered  into  more  amicable  relations 
with  England  and  was  not  disposed  to  run  the  risk  of  at- 
tack from  such  a  near  and  powerful  neighbor  for  the  sake 
of  pulling  German  chestnuts  in  China  out  of  the  fire.  The 
ascendancy  of  Japan  in  Far  Eastern  affairs  was  thus  firmly 
established  for  a  decade,  at  least.  Russia  was  to  go  no 
farther  toward  Korea,  and  to  keep  her  hands  off  of  China 
and  India,  while  England  and  Japan  were  to  be  free  to 
consolidate  their  holdings  and  to  extend  their  influence. 
This  new  treaty  Japan  was  quietly  negotiating  with  Great 
Britain  while  the  peace  conference  was  in  progress,  and  as 
soon  as  it  was  consummated,  the  Japanese  plenipotentiaries 
at  Portsmouth,  without  referring  to  it  of  course,  "mag- 
nanimously" withdrew  the  demands  that  Russia  found  so 
objectionable.  The  main  things  that  Japan  wanted  were 


THE  PORTSMOUTH  TREATY  191 

Korea,  a  free  field  in  lower  Manchuria,  and  relief  from  the 
menace  of  Russian  aggression.  The  first  two  were  secured 
by  her  victory  in  the  field,  and  the  third  by  her  treaty  with 
England.  The  rest  was  a  mere  matter  of  bargaining  in 
which  Japan  could  afford  to  be  generous. 

In  these  circumstances  the  alleged  sadness  of  the  Japa- 
nese envoys  and  the  real  exultation  of  the  Russians  when 
Japan  finally  withdrew  her  non-essential  demands  appear 
rather  amusing.  The  Russians  were  so  relieved  to  save 
anything  from  the  wreck  that  they  were  jubilantly  talkative 
to  the  newspaper  correspondents,  while  the  Japanese  main- 
tained their  impenetrable  reserve.  As  the  Russians  loudly 
declared  that  they  had  won  their  point,  the  reporters  natu- 
rally reflected  their  view.  But  as  time  passed  it  became 
more  and  more  evident  that  the  real  victory  was  with  Japan. 
She  had  waged  with  unprecedented  success  a  colossal  war 
with  the  Power  that  had  been  deemed  one  of  the  mightiest 
in  the  world.  With  the  minor  exception  of  the  almost  un- 
inhabited and  uninhabitable  northern  part  of  an  island, 
she  had  kept  all  the  fruits  of  victory,  conciliated  Russia  by 
saving  her  pride,  gained  enormous  prestige,  and  won  the 
favor  of  mankind  by  appearing  to  be  magnanimous  to  a 
defeated  rival.  That  the  Russians  could  be  jubilant  over 
the  result  only  suggests  the  worse  things  that  they  had 
feared. 

The  two  nations  accepted  the  peace  quite  differently. 
The  Russians  appeared  greatly  delighted,  and  the  Czar  in 
an  imperial  rescript  of  October  10  extolled  Count  Witte's 
success  in  obtaining  "rightful  concessions"  and  "an  all- 
advantageous  peace."  He  telegraphed  to  General  Line- 
vitch  in  Manchuria  that  "Japan  yielded  all  our  conditions, 
but  asked  for  the  return  of  Saghalien  occupied  by  Japanese 
troops";  that  "my  glorious  army  is  now  greater  in  num- 
bers and  stronger  than  before,  not  only  prepared  to  ward 
off  the  enemy  but  also  to  inflict  upon  him  an  important 
defeat";  but  that  "my  duty  to  my  conscience  and  to  the 
people  intrusted  to  me  by  God  commands  me  not  again 
to  put  to  the  test  the  valor  of  Russian  men  so  dear  to  my 


192  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

heart  and  ...  I  have  therefore  accepted  the  preliminary 
peace  conditions."  This  is  an  example  of  "saving  face" 
which  a  Chinese  mandarin  might  envy. 

The  Japanese  received  the  news  in  a  different  spirit. 
The  Mikado,  indeed,  in  an  imperial  rescript  October  16 
wrote  of  having  secured  "peace  with  glory,"  and  that 
"after  twenty  months  of  war  the  position  of  the  Empire 
has  been  strengthened,  and  the  interests  of  the  country 
have  been  advanced."  But  the  people  were  not  so  well 
satisfied.  Intoxicated  by  the  success  that  had  been  achieved 
on  the  battle-field,  they  had  set  their  hearts  on  the  whole  of 
Saghalien  and  on  an  indemnity  which  would  reimburse 
them  for  the  heavy  cost  of  the  war.  They  were  not  in  a 
position  to  know,  as  their  leaders  were,  of  the  difficulties 
which  the  continuance  of  the  war  would  have  involved. 
Their  burning  patriotism  did  not  take  account  of  risks. 
They  did  not  know  of  the  security  which  the  renewed 
Anglo-Japanese  Convention  gave  them.  They  feared  that 
the  terms  of  peace  did  not  guarantee  immunity  from 
further  Russian  aggressions,  and  that  as  soon  as  Russia 
could  double-track  the  Trans-Siberian  Railway,  mobilize 
a  larger  army,  and  build  a  new  fleet,  the  war  would  have  to 
be  fought  over  again  against  a  strengthened  foe.  When, 
therefore,  the  extras  announced  to  the  waiting  throngs 
that  the  Japanese  plenipotentiaries  had  waived  three  of  the 
terms  of  peace,  and  had  compromised  on  a  fourth,  there 
was  a  storm  of  protest  which  found  voice  in  great  mass- 
meetings  and  in  many  of  the  leading  newspapers,  including 
all  but  one  of  the  influential  journals  of  Tokyo.  The  boast- 
ing of  the  Russians  over  the  terms  of  peace  intensified  the 
popular  wrath.  The  daily  press  reprinted  a  statement  of 
Count  Witte  to  a  newspaper  correspondent,  in  which  he 
was  quoted  as  saying:  "I  would  not  pay  a  sou  of  indem- 
nity. .  .  .  The  Japanese  wanted  the  Chinese  Eastern 
Railway  as  far  north  as  Harbin.  I  gave  it  to  them  only  to 
Chang-chun.  .  .  .  They  asked  an  absurd  price  for  the 
island  of  Saghalien.  They  get  half  the  island;  they  get  no 
money."  The  Japanese  also  read  the  swaggering  despatch 


THE  PORTSMOUTH  TREATY  193 

which  the  excited  Witte  sent  to  the  Czar:  " I  have  the  honor 
to  report  to  your  Majesty  that  Japan  has  agreed  to  your 
demands  concerning  the  conditions  of  peace,  and  that  con- 
sequently peace  will  be  established,  thanks  to  your  wise 
and  firm  decision,  and  in  strict  conformity  with  the  instruc- 
tions of  your  Majesty.  Russia  will  remain  in  the  Far  East 
the  great  power  which  she  hitherto  has  been,  and  will  be 
forever." 

It  was  an  exhibition  of  bluster  which  caused  smiles  in 
other  countries,  but  it  added  fuel  to  the  fire  of  Japanese 
protest.  Prominent  men  shared  the  popular  indignation. 
The  newspapers  headed  their  accounts  with  such  captions 
as  "Disgraceful  Surrender,"  "Humiliating  Peace."  The 
Mikado  was  flooded  with  petitions  to  refuse  to  sign  the 
treaty  and  to  continue  the  war,  and  there  were  loud  demands 
that  the  Ministry  resign.  If  the  government  had  published 
not  only  the  actual  terms  of  peace  but  the  provisions  of  the 
Anglo-Japanese  treaty  the  popular  exasperation  would 
have  been  allayed,  to  some  extent  at  least.  Instead,  the 
government  tried  to  crush  the  discontent.  The  Japanese 
are  the  most  loyal  people  in  the  world,  but  there  are  limits 
even  to  their  acquiescence,  and  for  a  few  days  there  were 
stormy  times  in  the  leading  cities,  especially  in  Tokyo. 
Riots  broke  out.  The  offices  of  newspapers  that  had  sup- 
ported the  government  were  wrecked,  and  considerable 
other  property  was  destroyed.  Prince  Ito  was  threatened. 
The  police  were  unable  to  quell  the  disorder  and  troops 
had  to  be  called  out.  They  ended  the  tumult  in  short 
order,  but  many  rioters  were  killed  or  wounded. 

It  would  be  wrong  to  infer  too  much  from  these  distur- 
bances. Certainly  neither  Europe  nor  America  can  regard 
such  outbreaks  of  popular  violence  as  a  sign  of  inferior 
civilization.  The  newspapers  were  filled  for  months  with 
accounts  of  mobs  in  Russia.  Mobs  have  repeatedly  risen 
in  England,  and  America  probably  sees  as  many  as  any 
civilized  country  hi  the  world.  It  was  quite  natural  that 
the  settlement  of  a  great  war,  hi  which  popular  feeling  had 
been  stirred  to  the  utmost,  should  not  be  satisfactory  to 


194  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

everybody  even  in  Japan.  As  time  passed  the  Japanese 
gradually  took  the  view  that  the  sober  second  thought  of 
the  world  has  taken,  namely,  that  the  terms  of  peace  were 
on  the  whole  creditable  to  Japan,  and  quite  favorable  to  her. 


CHAPTER  XII 
JAPANESE  ANNEXATION  OF  KOREA 

THE  Japanese  found  themselves  in  Korea  in  the  course 
of  the  war  with  Japan  in  circumstances  roughly  analogous 
to  those  in  which  the  Americans  found  themselves  in  the 
Philippine  Islands  in  the  war  with  Spain.  Military  neces- 
sity had  brought  them  in,  and  once  in,  civil  as  well  as  mili- 
tary obligation  confronted  them.  The  country  was  in  a 
chaotic  condition,  the  people  were  sullen  or  openly  hostile, 
and  confusion  and  disorganization  were  on  every  hand. 
The  Japanese  lost  no  time  in  grappling  with  the  situation. 

Then*  first  thought  "was  to  take  the  direction  of  foreign 
affairs  into  then'  own  hands,  but  to  leave  internal  affairs 
in  the  hands  of  the  Korean  authorities,  with  Japanese  resi- 
dent "advisers"  to  give  needed  counsel.  The  Japanese 
Minister  to  Korea  frankly  said:  "Japan  is  confronted  by  a 
most  difficult  problem — to  maintain  the  fiction  of  Korean 
independence  while  practically  establishing  a  protectorate, 
and  yet  to  avoid  assuming  the  responsibilities  of  a  govern- 
ing power." 

August  19  (1904),  articles  one  and  two,  and  August  22 
article  three  of  an  "Agreement"  between  Japan  and  Korea 
were  concluded  at  Seoul  which  stipulated  that  "the  Korean 
Government  shall  engage  a  Japanese  subject  recommended 
by  the  Japanese  Government  as  Financial  Adviser  to  the 
Korean  Government";  that  "the  Korean  Government 
shall  engage  a  foreigner  recommended  by  the  Japanese 
Government  as  Diplomatic  Adviser  to  the  Foreign  Office"; 
and  that  "the  Korean  Government  shall  consult  the  Japa- 
nese Government  before  concluding  treaties  and  conventions 
with  foreign  Powers,  and  also  in  dealing  with  other  im- 
portant diplomatic  affairs  such  as  grants  of  concessions  to 
or  contracts  with  foreigners."  This  plan  did  not  work 

195 


196  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

satisfactorily.  The  Japanese  came  to  the  conclusion  that 
what  their  Minister  had  called  "the  problem"  was  too 
"difficult"  to  be  solved  by  such  half-way  measures.  They 
therefore  began  to  take  matters  more  decisively  into  their 
own  hands.  Prince  Ito  arrived  with  credentials  as  Resi- 
dent General,  whose  powers  disconcerted  the  Korean  Gov- 
ernment not  a  little,  and  its  dismay  was  increased  when 
the  proposal  was  made  that  the  Prince  should  occupy  the 
imperial  audience-chamber  while  receiving  the  return  call 
of  the  Emperor.  His  Majesty  resorted  to  the  customary 
Oriental  device  of  feigning  illness,  and  five  days  passed  be- 
fore the  interview  could  be  satisfactorily  arranged. 

A  draft  of  a  treaty  was  soon  presented  which  included 
the  appointment  of  a  Japanese  administrator  to  govern 
Korea  under  the  Emperor;  the  appointment  of  Japanese 
administrators  at  all  treaty  ports;  the  transfer  of  Korean 
diplomatic  affairs  to  Tokyo;  and  an  agreement  to  make  no 
arrangements  with  other  Powers  without  the  consent  of  Ja- 
pan. The  Emperor  protested,  and  his  Minister  of  Foreign 
Affairs,  Pakchisun,  implored  him  not  to  affront  the  spirits 
of  his  ancestors  by  yielding  such  prerogatives  of  his  imperial 
house.  But  his  other  ministers,  influenced  either  by  fear 
or  corruption,  urged  him  to  consent.  Finally,  the  feeble 
and  frightened  monarch  signed  the  treaty.  This  is  officially 
known  as  the  Convention  of  November  17,  1905,  although 
it  was  actually  signed  at  half  past  one  o'clock  of  the  morning 
of  the  18th.  January  29,  1906,  the  Emperor  issued  an 
appeal  to  the  nations  in  which  he  declared  that  his  signa- 
ture had  been  forged,  and  he  besought  them  to  establish  a 
joint  protectorate  over  Korea  in  order  to  save  it  from 
vassalage.  He  may  not  have  told  the  literal  truth  in  alleg- 
ing that  his  signature  was  forged,  but  he  certainly  did  not 
sign  the  document  voluntarily. 

Great  was  the  excitement  among  the  people  when  the 
treaty  became  known.  A  number  of  the  more  patriotic 
officials  committed  suicide,  six  of  them  of  high  rank,  includ- 
ing the  popular  General  Min  Yung-whan,  ending  their  lives 
by  harakiri.  Crowds  gathered,  screaming  and  tearing  their 


JAPANESE  ANNEXATION  OF  KOREA  197 

hair.  The  Japanese  wisely  left  the  people  to  vent  their 
grief  and  rage  without  interference,  except  when  stones 
were  thrown  or  fighting  began.  Order  was  gradually  re- 
stored, but  the  fires  of  anger  and  chagrin  long  smouldered 
in  secret. 

Prince  Ito  gave  an  interview  to  the  representatives  of 
the  press  in  Seoul  in  which  he  said:  "Now  that  the  new 
treaty  between  Japan  and  Korea  is  concluded,  it  is  believed 
by  many  Japanese  even  that  Korea  has  been  given  to  Japan, 
and  this  rash  belief  has  caused  bad  feeling  and  misunder- 
standings between  the  two  races.  The  most  important 
point  that  I  wish  to  impress  upon  you  is  that,  although  the 
new  relations  between  Japan  and  Korea  have  now  been 
definitely  established  by  the  conclusion  of  the  protectorate 
treaty,  the  sovereignty  of  Korea  remains  as  it  was,  in  the 
hands  of  the  Korean  Emperor,  and  the  imperial  house  of 
Korea  and  government  exists  as  it  did  before.  The  new 
relations  do  but  add  to  the  welfare  and  dignity  of  the 
Korean  dynasty  and  the  strengthening  of  the  country.  It 
is  a  great  mistake  to  look  upon  the  new  treaty  as  a  knell 
sounding  the  doom  of  Korea's  existence  as  a  kingdom." 

The  Korean  Emperor,  however,  refused  to  be  comforted. 
He  saw  that  he  was  really  under  the  domination  of  the  Japa- 
nese. A  man  of  flabby  will  and  of  hopeless  incompetence 
as  a  ruler,  he  was  not  destitute  of  royal  pride,  and  he  would 
not  have  been  human  if  he  had  not  felt  aggrieved  when  he 
was  despoiled  of  the  power  that  he  had  wielded  for  forty- 
one  years.  He  hated  the  Japanese,  partly  because  he  re- 
garded them  as  hereditary  enemies,  and  partly  because 
they  were  less  disposed  than  the  Russians  had  been  to 
flatter  him  and  to  supply  his  financial  necessities.  Fail- 
ing to  recognize  the  hopelessness  of  his  situation,  he  made 
his  palace  a  centre  of  intrigue  against  the  Japanese.  He 
was  too  helpless  to  do  anything  that  could  seriously  affect 
their  plans,  but  he  could  do  quite  enough  to  irritate  them 
in  a  hundred  ways  which  Oriental  duplicity  so  well  under- 
stands. 

Some  time  before  the  convention  of  November  17,  as  a 


198  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

last  desperate  recourse  he  had  asked  Mr.  Homer  B.  Hul- 
bert,  the  American  in  charge  of  the  government  school  in 
Seoul,  to  make  a  personal  appeal  to  President  Roosevelt. 
Mr.  Hulbert  started  at  once,  but  the  Japanese  suspected 
the  object  of  his  journey,  and  shadowed  him  by  spies  all 
the  way.  They  deemed  it  improbable  that  the  American 
Government  would  interfere,  but  they  took  no  chances  and 
pressed  matters  as  vigorously  as  possible  with  a  view  to 
having  the  whole  question  irrevocably  decided  before  Mr. 
Hulbert  could  reach  Washington.  He  managed  to  arrive 
in  San  Francisco  before  the  final  steps  of  the  convention 
could  be  completed,  but  by  the  time  he  reached  Washington 
he  was  too  late.  He  vainly  sought  an  interview  with  the 
President,  but  Mr.  Roosevelt  did  not  deem  it  expedient 
to  see  him,  and  he  was  obliged  to  content  himself  with  an 
interview  with  the  Secretary  of  State,  who  frankly  advised 
him  that  it  was  impracticable  for  the  American  Govern- 
ment to  intervene.  The  Emperor  cabled  Mr.  Hulbert 
December  8  that  he  regarded  the  convention  of  November 
17  as  "cancelled  on  account  of  force,"  and  that  "protest 
should  be  entered  at  once";  but  Mr.  Hulbert  found  that 
his  path  was  blocked  at  every  turn  and  that  he  could  ac- 
complish nothing. 

The  course  of  the  American  Government  had  been  a 
bitter  disappointment  to  the  Koreans  for  some  time  prior 
to  Hulbert's  arrival  in  Washington.  The  government  felt 
that  it  was  in  an  awkward  position  by  reason  of  the  treaty 
with  Korea  which  was  proposed  in  1882  and  agreed  to 
May  10,  1883,  one  of  whose  clauses  provided  that  if  other 
Powers  dealt  unjustly  or  oppressively  with  either  govern- 
ment, "the  other  would  exert  their  good  offices,  on  being 
informed  of  the  case,  to  bring  about  an  amicable  arrange- 
ment, thus  showing  their  friendly  feeling."  On  the  strength 
of  this  treaty  an  American  party  was  growing  up  in  Korea 
composed  of  Koreans  who  looked  to  the  United  States  for 
help  in  the  emergency  which  all  saw  to  be  impending.  The 
Washington  State  Department  saw  the  trend  of  Korean  feel- 
ing, and  was  not  a  little  embarrassed  as  it  was  convinced 


JAPANESE  ANNEXATION  OF  KOREA  199 

that  it  could  not  wisely  intervene  in  the  conditions  which 
had  developed. 

Phe  American  Minister  at  Seoul,  tne  Honorable  Horace 
N.  Allen,  was  a  careful  diplomat,  and  he  realized  the  deli- 
cacy of  the  situation.  But  he  could  not  tell  the  Koreans 
that  his  government  would  not  observe  its  treaty  obliga- 
tions, nor  could  he  prevent  the  Koreans  from  regarding  him 
as  then*  special  friend.  He  had  lived  among  them  for  many 
years,  and  he  had  a  kindly  feeling  for  them,  which  they  well 
knew.  Some  of  the  Japanese  newspapers  charged  him 
with  being  pro-Russian,  a  charge  which  had  no  foundation 
whatever.  At  any  rate,  the  Japanese  regarded  him  as  an 
obstacle  to  their  plans,  and  June  10,  1905,  the  Honorable 
Edwin  V.  Morgan  appeared  in  Seoul,  with  orders  to  super- 
sede Allen  as  American  Minister,  his  commission  being  dated 
the  preceding  March. 

The  statement  that  the  Tokyo  government  asked  for 
Allen's  recall  has  been  vigorously  denied;  but  a  hint  was 
doubtless  conveyed  to  Washington,  by  the  indirect  methods 
which  diplomacy  so  well  understands,  that  the  Japanese 
would  be  gratified  if  a  change  were  made  in  the  American 
legation  at  Seoul.  Doubtless,  too,  the  American  Govern- 
ment believed  that  it  would  be  better  at  that  particular 
juncture  to  have  a  minister  in  Korea  who  was  not  so  well 
known  for  his  friendship  with  the  Koreans.  So  one  of  the 
most  efficient  representatives  that  the  United  States  has 
ever  had  in  the  Far  East,  who  in  a  residence  of  twenty-one 
years  in  Korea,  fifteen  of  them  in  the  diplomatic  service, 
had  acquired  knowledge  and  experience  of  exceptional 
value  and  was  dean  of  the  diplomatic  corps  in  Seoul,  was 
summarily  dropped  for  the  offense  of  being  liked  and  trusted 
by  the  government  and  people  to  which  he  was  accredited. 

Mr.  Morgan's  tenure  was  brief.  The  Western  govern- 
ments did  not  fail  to  discern  the  significance  of  the  conven- 
tion of  November  17.  With  all  diplomatic  matters  handled 
in  Tokyo,  the  occupation  of  the  legations  in  Seoul  was  gone, 
and  the  Ministers  were  therefore  withdrawn.  To  the  in- 
dignation of  the  Koreans  and  the  chagrin  of  the  Americans 


200  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

in  Korea,  the  government  of  the  United  States  was  the 
first  to  withdraw  its  Minister.  It  leaked  out  afterward 
that  the  Japanese  Minister  at  Peking  had  hinted  to  the 
American  Minister,  the  Honorable  William  W.  Rockhill, 
that  in  view  of  the  Korean  hope  of  American  intervention, 
it  would  be  pleasing  to  Japan  if  the  United  States  should  be 
the  first  nation  to  close  its  legation  in  Seoul,  as  the  moral 
effect  upon  the  Koreans  would  be  great,  and  the  American 
party  would  realize  that  it  would  be  useless  to  make  further 
opposition.  The  Japanese  Minister  at  Washington  had 
dropped  an  intimation  to  the  same  effect.  The  American 
Government  obligingly  complied.  November  25,  only  a 
week  after  the  convention  between  Korea  and  Japan  was 
signed,  Morgan  was  officially  notified  to  leave,  and  as  soon 
as  he  could  pack  up  he  left  the  city,  December  8.  Ameri- 
can prestige  among  the  Koreans  immediately  slumped,  and 
among  the  Japanese  it  as  promptly  rose. 

Three  days  later,  December  11,  Min  Yeung-tchan,  who 
was  styled  "special  envoy  without  credentials,"  called  on 
the  American  Secretary  of  State  in  Washington  and  stated 
that  the  treaty  of  November  17,  under  which  the  direction 
of  the  external  relations  of  Korea  was  to  be  conducted 
through  the  Department  of  Foreign  Affairs  in  Tokyo,  was 
procured  from  the  Emperor  of  Korea  by  duress,  and  should, 
therefore,  be  ignored.  He  asked  the  United  States  to  act 
in  behalf  of  Korea  under  the  treaty  of  May  10,  1883,  be- 
tween the  United  States  and  Korea.  Secretary  Root  re- 
plied December  19,  stating  that  he  had  given  his  communi- 
cation consideration,  and  since  his  call  had  received  a  note 
from  Mr.  Kim,  Charge  d'Affaires  of  Korea,  in  which  he  had 
informed  the  State  Department  that  he  had  instructions 
from  the  Foreign  Minister  of  Korea  to  turn  the  archives 
and  other  property  in  his  charge  over  to  the  Japanese  lega- 
tion. Secretary  Root  concluded:  "In  view  of  this  official 
communication,  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  the  Government 
of  the  United  States  can  proceed  in  any  manner  upon  the 
entirely  different  view  of  the  facts  which  you  tell  us  per- 
sonally you  have  been  led  to  take  by  the  information  which 


JAPANESE  ANNEXATION  OF  KOREA  201 

you  have  received.  It  is  to  be  observed,  moreover,  that  the 
official  communications  from  the  Japanese  Government 
agree  with  the  official  communications  from  the  Korean 
Government  and  are  ouite  inconsistent  with  your  informa- 
tion."1 

This,  of  course,  was  diplomatic  camouflage.  We  shall 
not  do  Mr.  Root  the  injustice  to  assume  that  a  Secretary 
of  State  of  his  ability  and  intelligence  did  not  know  that 
"the  official  communications"  to  which  he  referred  were 
not  representative  of  the  real  Korean  opinion.  The  simple 
fact  was  that  the  American  Government  deemed  interven- 
tion impracticable,  and  found  it  convenient  to  take  advan- 
tage of  technical  reports  in  excusing  itself.  It  well  knew 
that  protest  would  avail  nothing,  that  it  would  not  help 
Korea,  and  would  only  irritate  Japan.  Years  afterward 
Mr.  Roosevelt  justified  his  course  hi  the  following  statement, 
which  at  a  later  date  must  have  been  read  in  Berlin  with 
full  approval:  "Korea  is  absolutely  Japan's.  To  be  sure, 
by  treaty  it  was  solemnly  covenanted  that  Korea  should  re- 
main independent.  But  Korea  was  itself  helpless  to  en- 
force the  treaty,  and  it  was  out  of  the  question  to  suppose 
that  any  other  nation  with  no  interest  of  its  own  at  stake 
would  attempt  to  do  for  the  Koreans  what  they  were  utterly 
unable  to  do  for  themselves.  Moreover,  the  treaty  rested 
on  the  false  assumption  that  Korea  could  govern  herself 
well.  It  had  already  been  shown  that  she  could  not  in 
any  real  sense  govern  herself  at  all.  Japan  could  not  af- 
ford to  see  Korea  in  the  hands  of  a  great  foreign  power. 
She  regarded  her  duty  to  her  children  and  her  children's 
children  as  overriding  her  treaty  obligations.  Therefore, 
when  Japan  thought  the  right  time  had  come,  it  calmly 
tore  up  the  treaty  and  took  Korea,  with  the  polite  and  busi- 
nesslike efficiency  it  had  already  shown  in  dealing  with 
Russia,  and  was  afterward  to  show  in  dealing  with  Ger- 
many."* 

fhe  limit  of  Japanese  patience  was  reached  when,  in  the 

1  Foreign  Relations  of  the  United  States,  1905. 

*  Article  in  The  Outlook,  New  York,  September  23,  1914. 


202  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

spring  of  1907,  the  Korean  Emperor  sent  a  delegation  to 
the  International  Conference  at  The  Hague  to  implore  the 
interference  of  Western  nations.  There  was  something  pa- 
thetic in  the  appearance  of  the  forlorn  but  patriotic  Koreans 
pleading  for  a  lost  cause;  for,  of  course,  the  Hague  commis- 
sioners could  not  receive  them.  The  Japanese  were  furious. 
The  Korean  Emperor  denied  that  he  was  responsible  for  the 
delegation,  but  no  one  believed  him. 

July  18,  the  Korean  Cabinet  ministers  waited  upon  his 
Majesty  and  humbly  but  firmly  represented  to  him  the 
serious  dangers  to  which  he  was  exposing  the  country  by 
his  continued  opposition  to  the  Japanese,  and  advised  him 
to  abdicate.  He  listened  with  mingled  rage  and  consterna- 
tion; but  after  long  and  stormy  conferences  with  them  and 
his  Elder  Statesmen,  the  crushed  and  humiliated  ruler 
tremblingly  affixed  his  signature  to  an  imperial  decree  an- 
nouncing the  transfer  of  the  throne  to  the  Crown  Prince. 
The  hapless  man  who  ascended  the  throne  in  this  inglorious 
manner  was  even  weaker  hi  mind  and  body  than  his  father, 
so  dull  and  stupid  that  he  was  suspected  of  being  mentally 
deficient.  He  was  crowned  with  due  ceremonial  August  27, 
and  when  the  Koreans  saw  that  he  had  cut  off  his  topknot, 
they  felt  that  their  cup  of  humiliation  was  full.  Mobs  sur- 
rounded the  palace  and  for  a  time  it  looked  as  if  there  would 
be  serious  trouble.  But  the  Japanese  troops  were  ready, 
and  gradually  the  tumult  subsided,  although  many  of  the 
people  remained  sullen. 

Of  course,  the  Japanese  diplomatically  announced  that 
they  had  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the  Emperor's  abdi- 
cation; that  the  step  had  been  taken  solely  on  the  advice 
of  wise  and  patriotic  Koreans  who  had  become  firmly  con- 
vinced that  the  retirement  of  the  Emperor  was  necessary  in 
the  interests  of  the  people  themselves;  that  the  Japanese 
would  have  preferred  to  have  the  old  Emperor  remain  on 
the  throne,  etc.  Of  course,  also,  no  one  with  intelligence 
enough  to  be  out  of  a  kindergarten  doubted  for  a  mo- 
ment that  the  Japanese  really  deposed  the  troublesome  old 
Emperor  and  put  his  putty  son  in  his  place.  Denials  were 


JAPANESE  ANNEXATION  OF  KOREA  203 

purely  " diplomatic/'  "to  save  face."  The  Japanese  were 
simply  astute  enough  to  cover  up  their  tracks  so  that  it 
would  be  difficult  for  an  outsider  to  connect  them  directly 
with  the  affair.  Even  if  the  Korean  Cabinet  Ministers  did 
act  without  explicit  orders,  the  essential  fact  would  be  un- 
changed. Does  any  sane  person  imagine  that  those  puppet 
Orientals  would  have  proceeded  to  such  extremes  in  a  mat- 
ter affecting  the  throne  without  knowing  what  their  Jap- 
anese masters  wanted;  or  if  they  had,  that  the  Japanese 
would  not  have  stopped  them  in  a  hurry  ? 

Much  has  been  said  about  Japan's  disregard  of  Korean 
rights  in  this  matter.  The  Japanese  defend  themselves  by 
saying  that  they  did  not  violate  any  treaty,  as  they  left 
the  throne  in  the  hands  of  the  Korean  royal  family,  simply 
anticipating  by  a  few  years  the  transfer  from  father  to  son. 
However  this  may  be,  the  Japanese  lost  no  time  in  putting 
themselves  into  such  relations  with  the  situation  that  the 
new  Emperor  would  be  even  more  helpless  than  his  royal 
father.  July  24,  Yi  Wan-yung,  an  able  and  well-educated 
but  notoriously  corrupt  official,  acting  by  authority  of  the 
Emperor  and  Prince  Ito,  signed  an  agreement  at  the 
Japanese  residency  in  the  following  terms:  "Article  I. 
The  Government  of  Korea  shall  follow  the  directions  of  the 
Resident-General  in  connection  with  the  reform  of  the  ad- 
ministration. Article  II.  Korea  shall  not  enact  any  law 
or  ordinance  or  carry  out  any  administrative  measure  un- 
less it  has  the  previous  approval  of  the  Resident-General. 
Article  III.  The  judicial  affairs  of  Korea  shall  be  kept 
distinct  from  ordinary  administrative  affairs.  Article  IV. 
No  appointment  or  dismissal  of  Korean  officials  of  high 
grade  shall  be  made  without  the  consent  of  the  Resident- 
General.  Article  V.  Korea  shall  appoint  to  official  posi- 
tions such  Japanese  as  are  recommended  by  the  Resident- 
General.  Article  VI.  Korea  shall  not  engage  any  foreigner 
without  the  consent  of  the  Resident-General.  Article  VII. 
The  first  clause  of  the  agreement  between  Japan  and  Korea, 
dated  August  22, 1904,  is  hereby  abrogated."  The  Emperor 
was  required  to  issue  a  proclamation  disbanding  his  army, 


204  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

although  he  was  permitted  to  retain  a  few  battalions  of  the 
imperial  court  guards  to  assist  in  maintaining  the  semblance 
of  royalty.  Some  of  the  soldiers  mutinied  on  receiving 
the  order  to  give  up  then*  arms,  and  killed  a  few  of  the 
Japanese;  but  they  were  quickly  overpowered  and  the 
Korean  army  ceased  to  exist. 

Thus  died  Korea  as  even  a  nominally  independent  nation. 
It  is  true  that  the  formal  announcement  of  annexation  to 
Japan  was  not  made  till  1910;  but  the  proclamation  then 
simply  gave  official  recognition  to  a  fact  which  had  long 
been  known  and  recognized.  Any  one  who  had  observed 
the  tide  of  Japanese  immigration  into  Korea,  the  business 
and  property  interests  which  were  speedily  developed,  and 
who  knew  the  national  and  international  questions  at  stake, 
might  have  known  that  annexation  was  inevitable  sooner 
or  later.  There  were  60,000  Japanese  in  Korea  before  the 
war,  and  after  the  Japanese  occupation  the  number  increased 
by  leaps  and  bounds.  It  was  not  reasonable  to  suppose 
that  a  large  Japanese  population  would  permanently  re- 
main under  the  absurd  Korean  laws,  or  support  by  taxes 
the  rotten  Korean  Government.  The  principle  of  extra- 
territoriality was  not  deemed  sufficient  to  provide  for  such 
a  situation.  Nor  was  it  probable  that  a  region  so  vital  to 
Japan's  political  and  military  position  would  be  left  in  such 
an  unsatisfactory  condition. 

The  critics  of  Japan  have  charged  her  with  breaking  her 
plighted  word,  given  in  the  treaty  of  February  23,  1904, 
which  included  the  following  pledge:  "The  Imperial  Gov- 
ernment of  Japan  definitively  guarantees  the  independence 
and  territorial  integrity  of  the  Korean  Empire."  The  semi- 
official Japan  Times,  whose  editor,  Mr.  Zumoto,  was  for- 
merly private  secretary  of  Prince  Ito,  and  afterward  a 
member  of  the  Japanese  Diet,  had  editorially  declared  in 
September,  1904:  "We  are  solemnly  pledged  before  the 
world  to  respect  the  independence_of  the  Peninsula  Kingdom, 
and  nothing  in  the  past  policy  and  action  of  the  Imperial 
Government  gives  even  the  shadow  of  excuse  for  doubting 
its  good  faith  in  its  international  relations."  It  is  not  neces- 


JAPANESE  ANNEXATION  OF  KOREA  205 

sary,  however,  to  assume  that  Japan  acted  in  bad  faith. 
Some  Japanese  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  treaty  of 
November  17,  1905,  dropped  the  guarantee  of  independence 
and  substituted  an  undertaking  to  "maintain  the  security 
and  respect  and  dignity  of  the  Korean  Imperial  House." 
But  the  facts  may  be  interpreted  consistently  with  the  gen- 
uineness of  Japan's  original  purpose  to  content  herself  with 
a  protectorate.  Prince  Ito,  in  an  authorized  interview  with 
a  representative  of  the  Associated  Press,  September  21, 
1907,  had  said  that  "some  people  in  Japan  believe  it  is  a 
mistake  not  to  annex  Korea,  but  I  have  been  steadfastly 
opposed  to  annexation.  Annexation  is  no  part  of  the  Em- 
peror's plan,  unless  it  should  prove  quite  unavoidable." 

We  believe  that  Prince  Ito  was  sincere  in  his  purpose  to 
give  a  fair  trial  to  the  plan  of  a  protectorate.  But  experi- 
ence proved  that  the  plan  was  a  failure.  The  Foreign  Office 
in  Tokyo  frankly  admitted  it  when,  in  an  official  statement 
issued  in  connection  with  the  promulgation  of  the  treaty  of 
annexation,  it  said:  "An  earnest  and  careful  examination 
of  the  Korean  problem  has  convinced  the  Japanese  Govern- 
ment that  the  regime  of  a  protectorate  can  not  be  made  to 
adapt  itself  to  the  actual  condition  of  affairs  in  Korea,  and 
that  the  responsibilities  devolving  upon  Japan  for  the  due 
administration  of  that  country  can  not  be  justly  fulfilled 
without  the  complete  annexation  of  Korea  to  this  Empire. 
.  .  .  Resident-General  Viscount  Terauchi,  hi  proceeding  to 
his  post,  was  charged  to  arrange  for  such  solution." 

Mr.  Kotaro  Michizuki,  a  prominent  member  of  the  Par- 
liamentary Commission,  pointedly  declared:  "President 
Roosevelt  took  the  Canal  Zone  because  it  was  essential  for 
the  national  defence  of  the  United  States.  Japan  annexed 
Korea  for  the  same  reason.  Only  Colombia  was  not  men- 
acing the  very  existence  of  the  United  States,  while  Korea 
certainly  was  through  her  intrigues  with  Russia."  So  no 
one  was  surprised  when  the  Foreign  Office  in  Tokyo  gave 
out  the  text  of  the  "treaty"  of  annexation,  August  29,  1910, 
which  declared  that  "His  Majesty  the  Emperor  of  Japan 
and  His  Majesty  the  Emperor  of  Korea,  having  in  view  the 


206  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

special  and  close  relations  between  their  respective  coun- 
tries, desiring  to  promote  the  common  weal  of  the  two  na- 
tions and  to  assure  permanent  peace  in  the  Extreme  East, 
and  being  convinced  that  these  objects  can  be  best  attained 
by  the  annexation  of  Korea  to  the  Empire  of  Japan,  have 
resolved  to  conclude  a  treaty  of  such  annexation.  .  .  .  His 
Majesty  the  Emperor  of  Korea  makes  complete  and  per- 
manent cession  to  His  Majesty  the  Emperor  of  Japan  of 
all  rights  of  sovereignty  over  the  whole  of  Korea";  and 
"His  Majesty  the  Emperor  of  Japan  accepts  the  cession 
mentioned  in  the  preceding  Article,  and  consents  to  the 
complete  annexation  of  Korea  to  the  Empire  of  Japan.  .  .  ." 

Much  of  the  talk  about  the  loss  of  Korean  independence 
is  irrelevant.  It  is  indeed  pathetic  to  the  last  degree  to 
see  an  ancient  people  reduced  to  vassalage.  The  meeting 
of  the  Cabinet  Ministers  and  the  Emperor,  August  24,  at 
which  annexation  was  agreed  to,  is  said  to  have  been  a 
moving  one.  The  Premier,  Yi  Wan-yung,  spoke  sorrowfully 
and  at  length  of  "the  hard  fate  of  the  country  in  being 
obliged  to  surrender  its  independence  in  deference  to  the 
welfare  of  the  people  and  the  security  of  their  lives  and 
property."  The  Emperor  listened  and  then  said  in  a  low 
voice  and  with  evident  emotion:  "I  have  fully  understood 
the  representations  made  by  the  Prime  Minister,  and  I 
leave  it  hi  your  Excellencies'  hands  to  deal  with  the  situa- 
tion." But  acquiescence  was  unavoidable.  Korea's  weak- 
ness and  its  position  in  the  Far  East  rendered  domination 
by  some  foreign  Power  inevitable.  The  only  question  was: 
"Under  which  King,  Bezonian" — Russia's  or  Japan's? 

Thus  the  curtain  fell  on  the  final  scene  of  the  passing  of 
old  Korea — "this  shuttlecock  among  the  nations,"  as  Lord 
Curzon  characterized  her,  "who  treated  her  from  entirely 
different  and  wholly  irreconcilable  standpoints  according 
to  then*  own  interests  or  prejudices,  and  at  whose  hands  she 
was  alternately — nay  even  simultaneously — patronized,  ca- 
joled, bullied  and  caressed."1  The  long  and  weary  struggle 
was  now  ended,  and  Korea  became  hi  name  as  well  as  in 

1  Problems  of  the  Far  East,  p.  188. 


JAPANESE  ANNEXATION  OF  KOREA  207 

fact  an  integral  part  of  the  Japanese  Empire.  The  old 
Emperor  and  his  successor  were  more  fortunate  than  most 
deposed  sovereigns,  for  their  heads  remained  on  their 
shoulders.  They  were  officially  called  Prince  Father  Yi  and 
Prince  Yi,  and  were  given  an  annual  civil  list  of  yen  1,500,- 
000  while  they  vegetated  in  retirement  in  their  former 
capital.  Stupidity  and  feebleness  are  conducive  to  longev- 
ity in  such  circumstances.  Prince  Father  Yi  indolently 
lingered  till  January  21,  1919,  when  he  was  gathered  to  his 
ancestors.  Prince  Yi  was  still  living,  at  last  accounts,  a 
dolorously  pathetic  survival  of  a  bygone  era. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

MANCHURIA  AS  A  FACTOR  IN  THE  FAR  EASTERN 

PROBLEM 

CROSSING  the  Yalu  River  at  Wiju,  Korea,  one  enters 
Manchuria,  the  great  debatable  ground  of  the  Far  East. 
It  more  nearly  resembles  Canada  than  any  other  region  of 
my  acquaintance.  Its  area  of  363,610  square  miles  is  more 
than  double  that  of  Japan,  and  four  times  that  of  Korea. 
The  scenery  is  as  diversified  as  one  might  expect  in  so  vast 
a  territory;  but  while  certain  parts  are  hilly,  and  even 
mountainous,  an  immense  section  is  as  level  as  an  American 
prairie.  It  is  one  of  the  finest  agricultural  regions  in  the 
world.  Although  comparatively  undeveloped,  it  already 
produces  immense  quantities  of  grain.  Manchuria  could  be 
made  the  granary  of  eastern  Asia  as  there  is  hardly  any 
limit  to  the  staple  crops  that  it  could  yield. 

Minerals  are  abundant.  Coal,  iron,  mica,  lead,  copper, 
gold,  silver,  asbestos  and  gypsum  are  found  in  various 
sections,  and  in  varying  degrees  of  richness,  as  well  as  lime- 
stone and  other  rocks,  some  of  them  well  adapted  to  build- 
ing purposes.  The  Chinese  have  long  known  of  the  de- 
posits that  lie  near  the  surface  or  outcrop  on  hillsides  or 
river-banks,  but  their  mining  methods  were  crude  and  in- 
fluenced by  superstitious  fear  of  fung-shui  (spirits  of  earth 
and  air),  so  that  they  yielded  scanty  results.  Russians  in 
the  north  and  a  few  British  companies  in  the  south  operated 
more  successfully,  the  latter  under  concessions  from  the 
Chinese  Government.  Such  concessions  were  not  easily 
secured  during  the  last  decade,  and  it  is  doubtful  whether 
more  will  be  granted,  partly  because  of  the  growing  unwill- 
ingness of  the  Peking  authorities,  but  chiefly  because  the 
Japanese  want  the  mining  privileges  themselves.  They  are 
already  developing  a  number  of  mines  on  a  comparatively 
large  scale.  The  Fushun  pits,  northeast  of  Mukden,  are 

208 


MANCHURIA  AND  THE  FAR  EAST  209 

turning  out  great  quantities  of  coal.  The  quality  is  not 
high,  but  the  mining  methods  are  thoroughly  modern,  and 
the  product  is  so  abundant  and  cheap  that  it  can  be  bought 
almost  anywhere  in  Manchuria  and  Korea.  The  Penchi-hu 
mines  work  less  extensive  deposits,  but  the  coal  is  superior 
for  industrial  purposes,  while  anthracite  and  natural  coke, 
valuable  for  smelting,  are  mined  in  the  neighborhood  of 
Niusin-tai.  Iron  ore  is  found  in  generous  quantities  near 
enough  to  veins  of  coal  to  make  foundries  exceedingly 
profitable.  Gold,  silver,  lead,  and  copper  are  mined  on  a 
smaller  scale,  but  successfully  in  a  number  of  places.  A 
British  mining  engineer  has  characterized  as  "exceedingly 
rich"  a  region  thirty-five  square  miles  near  Tung-hwa  and 
Hwai-jen,  and  the  report  of  a  Japanese  investigator  men- 
tions ore  whose  gold  reaches  in  some  cases  above  1/10,000 
grade,  and  is  ninety-nine  per  cent  fine.1 

The  population  of  Manchuria,  estimated  to  be  about 
20,000,000,  looks  large  in  comparison  with  Canada,  which, 
with  a  habitable  area  equal  to  that  of  Manchuria,  has  a 
population  of  only  7,206,643;  but  compared  with  Japan, 
Korea,  and  the  eighteen  provinces  of  China,  Manchuria  is 
sparsely  settled,  and  could  easily  support  many  times  its 
present  population.  The  characteristic  type  of  course  is 
Manchu;  but  there  are  great  numbers  of  pure  Chinese,  and 
the  numbers  are  rapidly  increasing,  for  Manchuria  offers 
cheaper  land  and  better  hope  of  remunerative  employment 
than  the  more  crowded  sections  of  China.  The  distinction 
between  the  Manchu  and  the  Chinese  is  not  so  apparent  in 
Manchuria  as  in  China  proper.  Indeed,  I  often  found  it 
impossible  to  tell  whether  men  I  met  upon  the  streets  were 
Manchus  or  Chinese.  I  frequently  asked  residents  to  tell 
me,  and  they  were  usually  unable  to  do  so  except  after 
inquiry.  It  is  easier  to  distinguish  Manchu  women,  as 
their  manner  of  dressing  the  hair  is  different  from  that  of 
Chinese  women.  Manchu  women  also  do  not  bind  their 
feet;  but  unbound  feet  are  not  always  a  clew  in  Manchuria, 
as  the  Chinese  women  in  that  region  do  not  bind  their  feet 

1  Cf.  The  Oriental  Review,  November  25,  1910. 


210  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

so  generally  as  their  sisters  in  central  and  southern  China. 
The  intermingling  of  the  Chinese  and  the  Manchus  appears 
much  more  complete  in  Manchuria  than  in  other  parts  of 
China,  and  the  result  is  a  virile  type,  physically  vigorous 
and  mentally  alert. 

The  Manchu  dynasty  long  ruled  all  China,  but  in  recent 
years  the  people  of  Manchuria  have  been  overawed  by  the 
aggressive  power  first  of  the  Russians,  and  later  of  the 
Japanese.  Manchuria  was  helpless  before  the  military 
strength  of  the  Russian  occupation  prior  to  the  Russia- 
Japan  War.  The  common  people  cared  little  who  their 
rulers  were,  knowing  that  they  would  get  scanty  considera- 
tion in  any  event,  while  the  ruffled  dignity  of  officials  was 
smoothed  by  Russian  gold.  The  Russians  had  greater 
tact  in  getting  along  with  the  Chinese  than  any  other 
foreign  people  showed,  and  difficulties  were  seldom  serious. 
When  Japan  drove  Russia  out  of  Port  Arthur  and  southern 
Manchuria,  the  people  simply  exchanged  one  master  for 
another.  Many  of  their  fields  and  villages  were  destroyed; 
but  it  was  not  the  policy  of  either  the  Japanese  or  the  Rus- 
sians to  molest  the  Manchurians  unnecessarily,  and  as  the 
contending  armies  required  enormous  food-supplies  and 
tens  of  thousands  of  carts  and  laborers,  the  thrifty  inhabi- 
tants took  shrewd  advantage  of  their  opportunity  and  reaped 
rich  profits  from  both  sides  with  true  Chinese  impartiality. 

There  are  several  important  towns  and  cities  besides  in- 
numerable villages.  Port  Arthur  and  Dalny  have  been 
already  mentioned.  Antung  on  the  Yalu  River,  not  long 
ago  a  squalid  village,  has  been  developed  as  the  point  at 
which  the  railway  from  Fusan  to  Mukden  crosses  the  river, 
and  as  the  port  of  entry  to  Manchuria  through  which  pours 
an  immense  volume  of  Japanese  trade.  Kirin  has  been 
given  prosperity  by  its  coal-mines  and  by  the  railway 
which  connects  it  with  Chang-chun  and,  through  that  city, 
with  the  great  markets  of  the  regions  beyond. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  cities  to  the  traveller  is 
Mukden,  the  ancient  capital  of  the  Manchu  emperors,  and 
afterward  the  seat  of  a  Chinese  Viceroy.  The  fine  old  wall, 


MANCHURIA  AND  THE  FAR  EAST  211 

though  crumbling  in  places,  is  still  a  notable  monument  of 
former  power.  We  walked  the  entire  circumference  of  it 
during  our  visit.  A  few  breaks  necessitated  awkward 
scrambling,  but  the  view  was  inspiring  and  every  yard 
seemed  to  teem  with  historic  associations,  the  vanished 
glories  of  a  great  imperial  house.  The  palaces  of  the  em- 
perors are  kept  in  tolerable  repair,  and  were  freely  showed 
to  us  on  a  card  of  introduction  from  the  American  Consul. 
A  few  miles  from  the  city  are  the  tombs  of  the  emperors — 
massive  mounds,  small  hills,  indeed,  rather  than  mounds, 
and  fronted  by  the  spacious  parks  and  temples  and  gates 
which  usually  mark  the  last  resting-places  of  Asiatic  rulers, 
and  which  are  profoundly  impressive  with  their  noble  pro- 
portions and  solemn  surroundings.  Here  also  are  battle- 
fields of  many  wars,  from  the  fierce  fights  of  wild  tribes  far 
back  in  a  shadowy  antiquity  to  that  titanic  conflict  between 
Russia  and  Japan,  when,  along  a  front  of  a  hundred  miles, 
huge  modern  armies  grappled  in  one  of  the  decisive  battles 
of  the  world.  Recent  years  have  brought  startling  changes 
to  the  quaint  old  city.  After  gazing  with  stirred  imagina- 
tion at  the  relics  of  ancient  wealth  and  splendor,  it  seems 
odd  to  see  a  railway  station,  telegraph  and  telephone  lines, 
macadamized  streets,  trolley-cars,  and  modern  public  build- 
ings lighted  by  electricity. 

The  Scotch  Presbyterian  Mission  on  the  east  side  of  the 
city,  the  Irish  Presbyterian  on  the  west  side,  and  the  British 
and  Foreign  Bible  Society's  agency  not  far  from  the  Scotch 
compound,  represent  churches,  schools,  hospitals,  and  a 
wide-reaching  evangelistic  work.  The  Scotch  Presbyterian 
Hospital,  so  long  superintended  by  the  famous  Doctor 
Dugald  Christie,  is  one  of  the  most  notable  mission  hos- 
pitals in  the  world.  Doctor  Christie,  whose  missionary 
career  began  in  1882  and  continued  for  a  notable  genera- 
tion, was  a  man  of  large  vision,  catholic  sympathies,  and 
conspicuous  ability  in  dealing  with  men.  He  so  impressed 
officials  and  wealthy  Manchus  and  Chinese  that  they  liber- 
ally contributed  to  his  work.  Personal  danger  did  not  deter 
him,  and  in  the  tragic  days  when  violence  raged  about 


212  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

Mukden,  he  calmly  continued  his  beneficent  care  of  the 
sick  and  wounded.  The  mission  property  was  destroyed  in 
the  Boxer  Uprising,  his  associate,  Mr.  Wylie,  was  murdered 
by  Chinese  soldiers  in  the  China-Japan  War,  and  shells  fell 
in  the  hospital  compound  and  on  the  roof  of  the  building 
during  the  battle  between  the  Russians  and  Japanese;  but 
with  the  heroism  of  a  soldier  he  steadily  performed  opera- 
tions and  ministered  to  the  dying.  When  he  died  the  whole 
city  mourned. 

New-chwang  has  long  been  the  commercial  gateway  of 
Manchuria.  Situated  on  the  river  Lia-ho  only  a  few  miles 
from  the  Gulf  of  Liao-tung,  its  low,  flat  mucky  ground  be- 
comes unfathomable  mud  in  the  rainy  season;  but  the  soil 
of  the  outlying  region  is  amazingly  fertile,  and  the  city  as 
the  shipping-port  has  long  had  a  rich  trade.  The  South 
Manchurian  Railway,  under  Japanese  management,  has 
made  vigorous  efforts  to  divert  this  trade  to  Dalny  (now 
Dairen).  Discriminatory  rates  bore  heavily  against  New- 
chwang,  an  official  report  showing  that  the  freight  tariff 
to  Mukden,  115  miles  distant,  was  higher  than  that  from 
Dairen  to  Mukden,  246  miles  away. 

Chang-chun,  formerly  a  wretched  place,  rapidly  rose  in 
importance  after  the  Russia-Japan  War  as  the  point  of 
transition  from  Japanese  to  Russian  spheres  of  influence. 
Here  the  South  Manchurian  Railway  ended  and  the  Russian 
State  Railway  began.  Both  Russians  and  Japanese  there- 
fore kept  their  eyes  on  Chang-chun.  The  railways  brought 
not  only  political  and  military  importance,  but  access  to 
markets  for  the  beans  which  yield  prolifically  on  the  broad, 
rich  fields  which  stretch  for  scores  of  miles  in  every  direc- 
tion. The  resultant  trade  has  reached  huge  proportions. 
Chang-chun  is  probably  the  pre-eminent  bean  city  of  the 
world.  Enormous  heaps  lying  on  the  dry  ground  at  the 
shipping  season  are  one  of  the  sights  of  the  Far  East.  The 
beans  and  their  product  in  oil  or  cake  are  shipped  to  China, 
Korea,  Japan,  and  even  Europe,  to  which  350,000  tons  have 
been  sent  in  a  single  year. 

Harbin  is  another  city  which  owes  its  present  dignity  to 


MANCHURIA  AND  THE  FAR  EAST  213 

foreigners.  The  Russians  have  made  Harbin.  It  is  on  the 
main  line  of  the  Trans-Siberian  Railway  from  Vladivostok, 
and  at  its  junction  with  the  line  which  runs  southward 
through  Manchuria.  This  means  that  the  whole  tide  of 
railway  travel  and  freight  from  Manchuria,  China,  and 
Korea  passes  through  Harbin,  and  is  transshipped  there, 
Japan  adding  its  quota  during  the  six  months  of  every  year 
that  the  harbor  of  Vladivostok  is  closed  by  ice.  What 
Chang-chun  is  for  beans  Harbin  is  for  flour,  horses,  cattle, 
and  sheep.  The  boundless  prairies  of  northern  Manchuria 
raise  millions  of  bushels  of  wheat,  and  the  migratory  Mon- 
golians of  the  steppes  find  in  Harbin  a  market  for  their  vast 
flocks  and  herds.  During  the  war  with  Japan  the  Russian 
Government  built  eight  flour-mills  at  Harbin,  with  a  ca- 
pacity of  1,700,000  pounds  a  day,  and  it  largely  depended 
upon  them  to  provide  bread  for  its  armies.  A  period  of  de- 
pression followed  the  war,  but  when  the  government  heard 
reports  that  American  flour-manufacturers  were  trying  to 
buy  the  mills  with  a  view  to  controlling  the  trade,  it  promptly 
gave  financial  assistance  in  order  to  keep  the  mills  in  Rus- 
sian hands.  The  wheat  is  of  good  quality,  but  the  millers 
do  not  make  as  good  flour  as  Americans.  They  can  make 
it  more  cheaply,  however,  and  their  customers  are  not  so 
particular  as  we  are,  so  that  Harbin  is  likely  to  remain  the 
centre  of  flour  manufacture  for  the  Far  East.  When  we 
take  into  consideration  not  only  these  mills  but  the  great 
stock-yards  and  horse-markets,  the  beet-sugar  factories,  and 
the  general  business  for  which  it  is  the  distributing-point, 
one  can  easily  see  that  Harbin  is  a  city  of  no  small  impor- 
tance. 

Since  the  Russia-Japan  War  an  anomalous  condition  has 
prevailed.  Theoretically,  Manchuria  remains  a  part  of 
China.  Its  officials  are  appointed  by  the  government  of 
China,  and  are  supposed  to  be  amenable  to  it.  Practically, 
the  Viceroy  and  his  subordinates  are  in  a  very  embarrassing 
position.  They  are  expected  by  the  Peking  government 
to  rule  the  country;  but  north  of  Chang-chun  the  Rus- 
sians, until  the  chaos  which  followed  the  revolution  of  1917 


214  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

weakened  their  hold,  were  in  possession  of  the  railway  and 
all  the  leading  cities  en  route.  South  of  Chang-chun  the 
Japanese  hold  the  railway,  the  fortified  city  of  Port  Arthur, 
and  the  commercial  city  of  Dairen.  Both  Russians  and 
Japanese  do  as  they  please  in  their  respective  territories, 
with  little  regard  for  the  wishes  of  the  Chinese  officials.  It 
is  true  that  their  jurisdiction  is  technically  limited  to  a 
narrow  strip  on  each  side  of  the  railway,  but  as  that  rail- 
way is  the  one  thoroughfare  of  the  country  along  which 
all  streams  of  trade  and  travel  flow,  and  in  which  practically 
all  the  activities  of  Manchuria  centre,  the  limitation  is  more 
nominal  than  real,  and  a  Chinese  magistrate  who  acted  on 
any  other  assumption  would  quickly  find  himself  in  hot 
water. 

An  incident  will  illustrate  the  difficulties  of  the  situation. 
Shortly  before  my  visit  a  representative  of  an  electrical 
supply  company  in  the  United  States  obtained  a  contract 
for  electric  lighting  from  the  Chinese  Viceroy  at  Mukden, 
who  employed  an  American  electrical  engineer  to  install 
the  plant.  After  the  poles  were  set  up  there  was  some  de- 
lay waiting  for  the  wires  to  arrive.  In  the  interval  the 
Japanese  began  erecting  poles  in  the  same  streets.  They 
had  no  legal  right  to  do  this  outside  of  their  concession 
around  the  railway  station,  about  three  miles  from  the  city 
wall ;  but  they  proceeded  to  do  so  and  without  asking  per- 
mission from  the  Chinese  authorities.  In  some  streets 
they  actually  strung  their  wires  on  the  poles  which  had  been 
set  up  by  the  American  engineer.  When  then-  right  was 
challenged,  they  replied  that  Prince  Fushima,  the  Crown 
Prince,  was  expected  to  visit  Mukden,  and  that  they  de- 
sired to  illuminate  the  streets  and  the  Japanese  Consulate 
in  his  honor.  Asked  whether  they  would  take  down  their 
wires  and  poles  after  his  visit,  they  replied  in  the  affirmative; 
so  they  were  permitted  to  continue  their  work.  The  princely 
visit  passed,  but  the  wires  were  not  taken  down.  Mean- 
time, the  American  wires  had  arrived.  The  Japanese  ig- 
nored requests  to  take  their  poles  and  wires  out  of  the  way. 
The  wrathful  American  engineer  gave  them  three  days' 


MANCHURIA  AND  THE  FAR  EAST  215 

notice,  and  then  instructed  his  men  to  cut  down  the  Japa- 
nese wires  and  to  string  his  own.  A  terrific  uproar  ensued. 
The  Japanese  rushed  to  the  Viceroy  and  made  such  rep- 
resentations to  him  that  he  ordered  the  American  engineer, 
whom  he  himself  had  employed,  to  take  down  the  wires 
from  his  own  poles  and  let  the  Japanese  put  theirs  back. 
The  American  engineer  refused  compliance,  and  the  fright- 
ened Viceroy  was  induced  to  give  the  Japanese  permission 
to  do  it  themselves.  Then  the  Japanese  offered  to  sell 
their  wires  to  the  Viceroy,  fixing  a  price  about  three  times 
above  their  value.  This  was  the  situation  when  I  left. 

I  heard  many  complaints  that  during  and  immediately 
after  the  Russia-Japan  War  hundreds  of  Japanese  trades- 
men had  taken  possession  of  shops  in  Manchurian  cities,  in 
some  cases  forcibly  ejecting  the  Chinese  proprietors,  and 
that  they  have  kept  these  shops  ever  since,  refusing  to  pay 
rent  except  where  some  particular  shopkeeper  was  able  to 
compel  payment.  Any  one  who  wishes  information  about 
the  methods  which  the  Japanese  employ  in  such  circum- 
stances might  secure  heartfelt  opinions  from  Colbran  & 
Bostwick,  the  American  company  which  had  the  street 
railway,  electric  lighting,  and  some  other  concessions  in 
Seoul. 

In  1909  the  Honorable  Philander  Knox,  then  American 
Secretary  of  State,  conceived  the  notion  of  neutralizing  the 
Manchurian  railways  under  the  joint  agreement  of  Russia, 
Japan,  France,  Germany,  and  Great  Britain,  and  he  pro- 
posed this  in  a  note  to  these  Powers.  It  was  a  beautiful 
mirage,  easily  suggested  by  the  anomalous  condition  which 
prevailed  in  Manchuria,  the  overlapping  and  irritations  in- 
cident to  the  relations  of  Chinese,  Japanese,  and  Russians, 
and  the  commercial  interests  of  American  and  European 
nations.  It  was  so  utterly  impracticable  that  it  is  amazing 
that  a  responsible  government  official  should  have  seriously 
urged  it,  and  it  is  all  the  more  amazing  that  he  should  have 
allowed  it  to  become  public  before  he  had  confidentially  as- 
certained the  attitude  of  the  Powers  concerned.  While 
Russia  and  Japan  highly  valued  the  commercial  advantages 


216  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

of  the  railways  which  they  respectively  controlled  in  Man- 
churia, their  chief  interest  in  them  was  military.  The  idea 
that  the  Russians  would  consent  to  having  the  railway 
which  was  their  only  thoroughfare  of  approach  to  Man- 
churia and  the  Far  East  taken  out  of  their  hands,  and  the 
idea  that  the  Japanese  would  ever  surrender  exclusive  con- 
trol of  the  railways  which  are  indispensable  to  their  exist- 
ence in  Manchuria  and  to  the  safety  of  Korea,  were  utterly 
visionary.  However  desirable  from  an  American  view- 
point, the  proposal  was  as  chimerical  as  a  trip  to  the  moon. 

It  is  not  surprising  that  the  proposal  was  received  with 
outward  politeness  and  inward  derision  in  Berlin,  Paris,  and 
London,  and  that  in  Tokyo  and  St.  Petersburg  it  was  re- 
ceived with  emotions  which  would  not  come  under  the 
motto  of  the  New  York  Times:  "All  the  news  that's  fit  to 
print."  However,  the  amenities  of  diplomatic  intercourse 
proved  to  be  equal  to  the  strain.  France,  Germany,  and 
Great  Britain  suavely  regretted  that  they  were  unable  to 
comply  with  the  request.  Russia  in  January,  1910,  solemnly 
reminded  the  government  of  the  United  States  that  the 
Chinese  Eastern  Railway  represented  such  expenditures  of 
Russian  money,  was  so  related  to  the  development  of  Rus- 
sian enterprises,  and  so  "served  as  the  principal  medium  of 
Russia's  connections"  that  "it  is  most  important  to  re- 
tain the  closest  control  over  the  line  which  of  course  could 
not  be  maintained  if  the  railway  were  transferred  to  an  in- 
ternational syndicate";  .  .  .  that  "the  principles  of  the 
inviolability  of  China's  sovereignty,  the  policy  of  the  open 
door  and  equal  commercial  opportunities  in  Manchuria,  are 
not  at  present  threatened  in  any  way;  and  therefore  the 
questions  raised  by  the  government  of  the  United  States 
with  regard  to  the  most  effective  means  of  defending  these 
principles  are  not  justified  by  the  condition  of  affairs  in 
Manchuria." 

In  Tokyo,  Count  Komura,  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs, 
blandly  explained  Japan's  refusal  in  an  address  in  the  Diet, 
January  27,  which  included  the  following  significant  sen- 
tences: "While  the  Imperial  Government  are  determined 


MANCHURIA  AND  THE  FAR  EAST  217 

to  adhere  to  their  avowed  policy  scrupulously  to  uphold  the 
principle  of  the  open  door  and  equal  opportunity  in  Man- 
churia, it  should  be  observed  that  realization  of  the  pro- 
posed plan  would  bring  about  radical  changes  in  the  condi- 
tion of  things  in  Manchuria  which  was  established  by  the 
treaties  of  Portsmouth  and  Peking,  and  would  thus  be  at- 
tended with  serious  consequences  in  the  region  affected  by 
the  South  Manchurian  Railway.  There  have  grown  up 
numerous  undertakings  which  have  been  promoted  in  the 
belief  that  the  railway  would  remain  in  our  possession  and 
the  Imperial  Government  could  not,  with  a  due  sense  of 
their  responsibility,  agree  to  abandon  the  railway  hi  ques- 
tion." 

The  proposal  not  only  failed,  but  it  had  the  startling  re- 
sult of  bringing  Russia  and  Japan  together,  as  each  govern- 
ment wished  to  retain  what  it  had.  For  once  they  had  a 
common  interest  against  the  rest  of  the  world,  and  July  4, 
1910,  they  signed  an  agreement  which  recognized  their  con- 
trol of  their  respective  railway-lines,  delimited  their  spheres 
of  influence  in  Manchuria,  formed  a  working  agreement 
which  gave  each  government  freedom  to  consolidate  its 
interests  in  the  region  assigned  to  it,  and  served  as  a  broad 
hint  to  western  secretaries  of  state  that  outsiders  had 
better  "  keep  off  the  grass."  Marquis  Katsura,  then  Premier 
of  Japan,  denied  that  the  treaty  was  influenced  by  the  pro- 
posal of  Mr.  Knox,  and  asserted  that  it  had  been  under 
consideration  for  some  time  prior  to  that  proposal,  "solely 
with  the  purpose  of  affording  a  reassurance  of  the  friendly 
relations  between  Japan  and  Russia  and  of  insuring  peace 
in  the  Far  East;  though  at  the  same  time  with  the  prac- 
tical object  of  improving  traffic  connections  and  working 
arrangements  between  the  railroads."  Whether  or  not 
this  statement  was  purely  "diplomatic,"  it  is  undoubtedly 
true  that  the  American  proposal  hastened  the  consumma- 
tion of  any  negotiations  that  may  have  been  in  progress 
between  Japan  and  Russia  and  gave  both  parties  added 
satisfaction  when  they  were  concluded.  The  only  satisfac- 
tion that  the  rest  of  the  world  could  get  out  of  the  treaty 


218  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

lay  in  the  reflection  that,  since  Russia  and  Japan  were  in 
Manchuria  anyway,  and  intended  to  stay  there,  it  was 
better  for  them  to  come  to  some  agreement  than  to  keep 
the  region  in  turmoil  by  conflicting  activities. 

Mr.  Knox,  therefore,  instead  of  opening  Manchuria  as 
he  had  contemplated,  simply  consolidated  Japanese  power 
in  Korea  and  lower  Manchuria  and  Russian  power  in 
upper  Manchuria.  China's  interests  were  wholly  ignored. 
It  is  true  that  Marquis  Katsura  declared  that  "it  is  Japan's 
determined  policy  to  adhere  closely  to  all  agreements  and 
treaties  with  China  and  other  nations."  But  this  signified 
nothing  when  a  large  section  of  Chinese  territory  was  calmly 
divided  between  two  foreign  Powers.  Yint  Chang,  then 
the  Chinese  Minister  to  Germany,  truly  said :  "  The  Russo- 
Japanese  agreement  of  course  deals  my  country  a  vital 
blow.  It  amounts  to  nothing  more  or  less  than  the  partition 
of  Manchuria  between  the  contracting  powers.  They  talk, 
it  is  true,  about  maintenance  of  the  status  quo  and  have 
written  'open  door'  in  large  beautiful  characters  across  the 
face  of  the  agreement;  but  everybody  understands  that 
the  door  is  really  being  slammed  shut." 

Did  Russia  abandon  her  purpose  to  reach  the  open  sea 
in  the  Far  East?  She  did  not.  There  were  Russians  who 
felt  that  the  whole  Manchurian  policy  of  their  government 
had  been  a  mistake,  that  Manchuria  was  a  costly  burden, 
and  that  Russia  would  be  better  off  without  it;  but  such 
Russians  were  comparatively  few.  No  one  who  under- 
stood the  character  and  aspirations  of  Russia  believed  that 
her  withdrawal  was  even  a  remote  possibility,  or  that  she 
would  fail  to  move  farther  south  as  soon  as  she  could.  For 
the  time  Russia  appeared  to  be  on  good  terms  with  Japan 
and  the  two  countries  sought  certain  common  interests  in 
an  amicable  way.  A  brief  but  significant  convention  of 
two  articles  was  signed  July  6,  1916,  to  safeguard  the  inter- 
ests of  the  two  governments  in  the  Far  East.  But  all  the 
reasons  which  led  her  to  occupy  Manchuria  and  to  try  to 
get  Korea  years  ago  existed  in  undiminished  force.  Cli- 
mate and  geography  had  not  changed.  Vladivostock,  the 


MANCHURIA  AND  THE  FAR  EAST  219 

terminus  of  the  Trans-Siberian  Railway,  was  still  blocked 
by  ice  nearly  half  of  the  year  and  was  still  upon  the  Japan 
Sea  with  no  outlet  upon  the  Pacific  except  through  narrow 
straits  which  Japan  controlled.  The  Russian  imperialists, 
blissfully  unaware  that  they  were  to  fall  a  few  years  later, 
had  an  irrefragable  conviction  that  they  were  to  inherit 
the  earth.  They  believed  that  an  outlet  to  the  open  sea 
through  Manchuria  was  indispensable  to  their  rightful 
position  in  the  Far  East,  and  their  determination  to  secure 
it  had  not  altered  an  iota.  There  might  be  delay;  they 
would  wait.  A  few  decades  more  or  less  were  a  minor 
matter  in  realizing  an  age-old  ambition.  Meantime,  Rus- 
sia proceeded  to  tighten  her  hold  upon  northern  Manchuria, 
developed  its  agriculture  and  flour-mills  so  that  they  could 
furnish  abundant  food-supplies,  spent  enormous  sums  in  re- 
grading  and  double-tracking  the  Trans-Siberian  Railway, 
laying  heavier  rails,  improving  rolling-stock  and  terminal 
facilities,  encouraging  her  peasants  to  settle  along  the  line, 
aiding  them  in  getting  land  and  making  a  start,  and  strength- 
ening the  fortifications  of  Vladivostok  until  it  would  be 
harder  to  capture  than  Port  Arthur  ever  was. 

A  significant  illustration  of  Russia's  intentions  occurred 
early  in  the  year  1911,  when  Russia  threatened  to  occupy 
the  Chinese  Province  of  Ili,  on  the  Mongolian  frontier,  on 
the  pretext  that  the  privileges  granted  by  China  in  the 
treaty  of  1881  were  being  denied  to  Russian  trade.  The 
Chinese  Government  hastily  replied  that  it  would  comply 
with  all  of  Russia's  demands.  Russian  troops,  however, 
continued  to  advance  until  they  were  within  a  hundred 
miles  of  the  Chinese  border,  when  another  ultimatum  was 
issued.  China  yielded  again,  and  the  Slav  slowly  retired, 
having  impressed  China  anew  with  his  power  and  his 
readiness  to  use  it  when  necessary  to  carry  out  his  pur- 
poses. 

Japan,  too,  is  under  no  less  constraint  than  before  to  re- 
sist the  advance  of  any  European  nation  in  Manchuria,  and 
to  maintain  paramount  influence  in  China.  It  is  difficult 
to  understand  how  any  one  who  knows  what  they  have 


220  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

done  and  are  now  doing  can  imagine  that  they  contemplate 
anything  else  than  permanent  occupation.  The  Southern 
Manchurian  Railway  is  one  of  the  best  railways  in  Asia. 
Its  Pullman  sleeping-cars,  its  fast  locomotives,  and  its  excel- 
lent road-bed  are  a  delight  to  the  traveller  after  the  so- 
called  accommodations  which  he  finds  in  some  other  coun- 
tries. The  Japanese  have  expended  great  sums  at  Dairen. 
They  have  constructed  immense  docks  for  shipping,  opened 
new  streets  and  repaved  old  ones,  erected  handsome  public 
and  private  buildings,  and  in  general  are  making  Dairen 
a  model  city  of  the  Far  East. 

Japanese  expenditures  at  Port  Arthur  are  not  so  much 
in  evidence  as  at  Dairen.  Most  of  the  forts  where  the 
heavy  fighting  of  the  siege  was  done  remain  in  the  state  of 
ruin  in  which  they  were  left  when  the  Russians  surrendered. 
This  is  interesting  to  the  visitor,  for  it  enables  him  to  form 
a  clearer  idea  of  the  terrific  character  of  the  struggle.  It  is 
awe-inspiring  to  stand  upon  one  of  those  mounds  and  mark 
the  ruined  masonry,  the  heaps  of  de*bris,  and  the  innumera- 
ble shell-holes  which  dot  the  tops  and  sides  of  the  hills.  It 
is  difficult  to  understand  how  flesh  and  blood  could  have 
endured  such  a  bombardment.  It  is  no  wonder  that  the 
Russians,  brave  as  they  were,  found  it  impossible  to  stay 
in  forts  which  must  have  been  belching  volcanoes  of  ex- 
ploding shells.  The  fact  that  the  Japanese  have  left  most 
of  these  forts  in  their  ruined  condition  does  not  prove  that 
Port  Arthur  is  an  unguarded  position.  The  most  formidable 
fortifications  which  the  Russians  developed,  those  which 
protected  the  fortress  from  the  sea,  were  not  seriously  in- 
jured by  the  Japanese.  The  heavy  fighting  was  done  over 
the  outer  line  of  forts  on  the  land  side,  and  the  other  gar- 
risons surrendered  when  the  city  and  harbor  became  un- 
tenable. The  result  was  that  the  Japanese  obtained  the 
best  of  the  forts  in  excellent  condition.  There  is  little  ne- 
cessity for  them  to  spend  much  money  in  further  fortifica- 
tions, for  Port  Arthur  is  as  impregnable  from  the  sea  as 
it  ever  was,  and  the  Japanese  are  in  such  absolute  control 
of  the  land  approaches  that  they  probably  are  not  appre- 


221 

hensive  of  the  results  of  such  an  attack  from  that  direction 
as  they  made  upon  the  Russians. 

It  is  difficult  to  speak  positively,  however,  for,  while 
visitors  are  freely  admitted  to  the  ruined  forts,  they  are 
not  permitted  to  approach  those  that  are  occupied.  Occa- 
sionally, too,  a  ruined  fort,  which  had  hitherto  been  open 
to  inspection,  is  quietly  withdrawn  from  public  gaze.  No 
public  announcement  is  made  and  nothing  appears  in  the 
newspapers,  but  the  visitor  who  applies  for  a  pass  is  politely 
told  that  that  particular  place  " is  not  open  to-day."  There 
is  little  doubt  not  only  that  many  of  the  forts  are  in  excel- 
lent military  condition,  with  ample  stores  and  munitions, 
but  that  from  time  to  time  the  most  important  of  the  ruined 
forts  are  quietly  refortified.  That  person  is  innocent  in- 
deed who  imagines  that  Japan  is  doing  all  that  she  is  doing 
in  southern  Manchuria  with  the  expectation  of  withdrawing 
in  the  near  future. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  why  should  the  Japanese  withdraw  ? 
They  knew  perfectly  well  that  if  they  did  the  Russians 
would  move  down  and  occupy  their  old  positions,  and  that 
the  conditions  which  preceded  the  Russia-Japan  War,  and 
which  caused  it,  would  recur.  It  is  fundamental  to  sound 
thinking  on  this  subject  to  remember  that  Japan  cannot  be 
expected  to  acquiesce  in  having  any  European  Power  form 
a  wedge  between  Japan  and  China  and  lie  along  the  Korean 
frontier  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  Japanese  occupation  of 
Korea  precarious.  It  has  long  been  a  settled  principle  of 
British  policy  in  India  not  to  permit  Russia  to  come  down 
to  the  Indian  frontier,  and  every  intelligent  person  under- 
stands the  reason.  Why,  then,  should  the  Japanese  be  criti- 
cised for  doing  what  the  British  are  doing  with  their  posses- 
sions, and  what  America  would  surely  do  if  any  other 
nation  were  to  attempt  to  occupy  Mexico?  The  United 
States  does  not  fortify  its  Canadian  line  or  have  any  un- 
easiness about  it,  because  the  Canadians  are  men  of  our 
own  race  and  speech,  and  we  regard  them  almost  as  we  do 
our  own  countrymen.  But  suppose  a  nation  radically  dif- 
fering from  us  and  known  to  have  plans  inimical  to  our  in- 


222  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

terests  should  seize  Canada,  does  any  one  imagine  that  the 
United  States  would  be  acquiescent?  The  Japanese  had 
abundant  reason  to  suspect  the  plans  of  Russia,  and  while 
it  was  to  the  temporary  interest  of  the  two  nations  to  work 
in  harmony,  the  Japanese  did  not  propose  to  be  caught 
napping  if  the  political  whirligig  should  make  another  turn. 


PART  III 

JAPAN— THE  IMPERIAL  POWER  IN 
THE  FAR  EAST 


CHAPTER  XIV 
JAPAN  AND  THE  JAPANESE 

THE  rise  of  Japan  is  one  of  the  startling  phenomena  of 
the  age.  Within  the  memory  of  men  now  living  Japan  was 
an  obscure  and  unimportant  Asiatic  nation,  whose  people 
knew  little  and  cared  less  about  the  Western  world,  and  were 
still  under  the  sway  of  age-old  feudalism  and  superstition. 
Only  a  few  Europeans  had  been  seen,  beginning  with  some 
wandering  Portuguese,  who  are  said  to  have  arrived  at 
Kyushu  in  the  year  1530,  and  the  Portuguese  Pinto,  who 
came  in  1542.  The  first  white  men  were  hospitably  re- 
ceived. Shortly  after  Francis  Xavier  arrived,  in  1549,  he 
wrote:  "The  nation  with  which  we  have  to  deal  here  sur- 
passes in  goodness  any  of  the  nations  ever  discovered. 
They  are  of  a  kindly  disposition,  wonderfully  desirous  of 
honor,  which  is  placed  above  everything  else.  They  listen 
with  great  avidity  to  discourses  about  God  and  divine 
things." 

During  the  last  quarter  of  the  sixteenth  century  and  the 
first  half  of  the  seventeenth,  "the  testimony  of  all  writers 
is  that  the  Japanese  hi  their  intercourse  with  foreigners  were 
distinguished  for  high-bred  courtesy  combined  with  refined 
liberality  and  generous  hospitality.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  merchants  and  mariners  with  whom  they  came  hi  con- 
tact were  usually  of  bad  manners  and  morals,  overreaching, 
avaricious,  and  cruel ;  the  missionaries  were  often  arrogant, 
ambitious,  and  without  proper  respect  for  native  customs; 
and  the  naval  and  other  officials  of  foreign  governments 
were  haughty,  actuated  by  a  spirit  of  aggression,  and  un- 
mindful of  the  comity  of  nations.  The  history  of  the  time 
shows  that  the  policy  of  exclusion  adopted  by  Japan  in  the 
seventeenth  century  was  not  inherent  in  the  constitution  of 
the  state  or  the  character  of  the  people,  but  that  it  was 

225 


226  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

adopted  in  consequence  of  the  unfavorable  character  of  the 
relations  with  Europeans."1 

Incensed  by  the  overbearing  conduct  of  the  white  men 
and  alarmed  by  reports  that  the  Roman  Catholic  mission- 
aries were  political  emissaries  of  Western  nations,  the  Japa- 
nese turned  against  the  foreigners  within  their  territory. 
Missionaries  and  traders  were  driven  out,  Japanese  converts 
to  Christianity  were  subjected  to  bloody  persecution,  severe 
laws  were  enacted  forbidding  foreigners  to  enter  the  coun- 
try or  Japanese  to  leave  it  under  pain  of  death,  and  fierce 
efforts  were  made  to  root  out  and  exterminate  every  foreign 
influence,  missionary  and  commercial.  This  period  ex- 
tended down  to  1853.  During  all  those  years  Japan  ap- 
peared to  be  hermetically  sealed  from  the  outside  world. 

Americans  are  fond  of  saying  that  this  isolation  and  stag- 
nation were  broken  up  by  Commodore  Matthew  C.  Perry, 
who,  March  31,  1854,  concluded  a  treaty  between  Japan 
and  the  United  States,  the  first  of  the  links  to  bind  Japan 
to  Western  nations.  Many  Japanese  have  given  cordial 
testimony  to  the  same  effect;  but  Marquis  Okuma  has 
challenged  this  popular  belief  and  ascribed  the  first  impulse 
toward  modern  civilization  to  the  Russian  Admiral  Nicholas 
"Lizanoff"  (Nicolai  Petrovitch  de  Rezanov,  1764-1807), 
who  visited  Japan  nearly  half  a  century  before  Perry. 
Certain  it  is,  however,  that  Commodore  Perry's  visit  to 
Japan  and  the  visit  of  a  Japanese  commission  to  America 
in  1860  marked  the  transition  from  the  old  to  the  new  Japan, 
and  the  start  of  the  nation  on  that  road  of  progress  on 
which  it  has  since  made  such  amazing  strides. 

A  period  of  internal  commotion  ensued.  While  some 
Japanese  welcomed  the  new  era,  others  reacted  in  fierce 
opposition.  It  is  always  thus  in  every  land.  Some  men 
eagerly  reach  forward  to  the  new,  others  cling  tenaciously 
to  the  old.  In  Japan  the  conflict  between  the  progressive 
and  conservative  forces  kept  the  country  in  a  turmoil  for 
a  decade.  The  reactionary  party  rallied  about  the  Shogun, 
the  most  powerful  of  the  feudal  lords  and  the  commander- 

1  John  W.  Foster,  American  Diplomacy  in  the  Orient,  p.  12. 


JAPAN  AND  THE  JAPANESE  227 

in-chief  of  the  army,  who  had  virtually  usurped  the  govern- 
ment and  reduced  the  Emperor  not  only  to  a  position  of 
nominal  authority  but  of  real  subordination.  The  pro- 
gressive party  rallied  about  the  Emperor.  The  struggle 
culminated  in  1868  in  the  overthrow  of  the  Shogun  and  the 
restoration  of  the  Emperor  to  his  rightful  place  as  reigning 
sovereign. 

The  reconstruction  of  Japan  upon  modern  lines  promptly 
followed.  The  mere  enumeration  of  the  changes  that  were 
inaugurated  profoundly  impresses  one:  1869  saw  the  tele- 
graph and  the  Charter  Oath,  which  was  to  Japan  almost 
what  Magna  Charta  was  to  England;  1870  saw  charted 
waters  and  lighthouses;  and  1871,  post-offices,  postage- 
stamps,  railways,  newspapers,  the  downfall  of  feudalism 
and  the  founding  of  the  Imperial  University.  In  1872,  an 
imperial  commission  visited  Europe  and  America  to  study 
Western  institutions  and  methods  and  ascertain  what  they 
contained  that  would  be  beneficial  to  Japan.  In  1873  the 
Christian  calendar  was  adopted  and  the  anti-Christian 
edicts  were  repealed.  In  1877  a  postal  treaty  was  con- 
cluded with  foreign  nations.  In  1880  the  penal  code  was 
reorganized  and  prefectural  assemblies  were  established. 
The  year  1881  marked  the  first  steps  toward  constitutional 
government,  and  February  11,  1889,  the  Constitution  was 
formally  promulgated,  the  first  constitution  to  be  adopted 
by  any  country  in  Asia.  In  1897  the  gold  standard  cur- 
rency was  adopted.  By  1899  Japan  had  made  such  pro- 
gress and  had  so  gamed  the  confidence  of  the  world  that, 
with  the  consent  of  the  European  and  American  govern- 
ments, the  extra-territorial  laws  were  abolished  and  Japan 
was  recognized  as  one  of  the  enlightened  nations  which 
could  be  trusted  to  deal  fairly  with  citizens  of  other  nation- 
alities within  her  borders. 

Foreigners  do  not  complain  of  any  loss  of  privilege  as  a 
result  of  the  treaties,  which  July  17,  1899,  abolished  their 
long-cherished  rights  of  extra-territoriality  and  brought 
them  under  the  jurisdiction  of  Japanese  courts.  The  new 
treaties  went  into  effect  without  a  jar.  Both  missionaries 


228  THE  MASTERY  OP  THE  FAR  EAST 

and  business  men  assured  me  that  they  were  as  safe  in  their 
rights  as  ever,  and  that  Japanese  judges  were  rather  in- 
clined to  favor  them  in  their  solicitude  that  foreigners  should 
have  full  justice  in  the  courts.  Indeed  Americans  in  Japan 
have  had  less  trouble  than  Japanese  in  the  United  States. 
Foreigners  are  free  to  travel  or  reside  wherever  they  please, 
and  they  are  perfectly  safe  in  doing  so  if  they  behave  them- 
selves. If  they  violate  the  law,  a  Japanese  policeman  will 
courteously  but  resolutely  hale  them  before  a  Japanese 
magistrate,  who  with  like  courtesy  and  resolution  will  in- 
flict appropriate  punishment.  And  the  offender  almost 
invariably  richly  deserves  what  he  gets. 

To-day,  all  the  tides  of  modern  life  are  sweeping  through 
Japan.  Evidences  of  the  new  spirit  which  is  stirring  the 
nation  are  apparent  on  every  hand.  Tokyo,  the  political 
and  intellectual  centre  of  the  nation,  has  become  the  largest 
city  of  Asia,  and  one  of  the  influential  cities  of  the  world. 
Osaka  is  a  great  manufacturing  city.  The  ports  of  Yoko- 
hama, Kobe,  Nagasaki  and  Shimonoseki  are  crowded  with 
the  shipping  of  many  lands.  One  would  not  expect  to  see 
much  change  in  Kyoto,  the  artistic  and  Buddhistic  heart  of 
Japan,  or  in  scenic  and  historic  Nikko;  but  even  in  these 
places  of  venerable  antiquity  the  traveller  finds  modern 
hotels  and  other  indications  of  progress.  The  fine  high- 
way, three  miles  in  length  connecting  the  two  Shinto  shrines 
in  the  sacred  city  of  Yamada,  is  not  surpassed  by  any  road 
in  Europe.  The  contrast  with  the  Japan  of  1850  is  so  great 
as  to  be  well-nigh  incredible.  A  nation  that  had  never 
heard  of  steam  as  a  motive  power  is  now  grid-ironed  with 
six  thousand  miles  of  railways  and  is  sending  its  merchant 
marine  to  the  most  distant  lands.  A  nation  that  knew 
nothing  of  electricity  uses  telegraphs,  telephones,  trolley- 
cars,  and  motors  of  every  kind.  From  small  coasting  junks 
to  huge  ocean  steamers,  from  hand-looms  to  improved 
machinery,  from  sedan-chairs  to  railway-trains,  from  swords 
to  magazine  rifles  and  battleships,  from  a  burning  rag  in  a 
saucer  of  bean-oil  to  the  brilliancy  of  electric  lights,  from 
memorizing  Confucian  classics  to  the  study  of  modern  sci- 


JAPAN  AND  THE  JAPANESE  229 

ence,  from  national  insignificance  to  world-power — and  all 
this  within  a  half  dozen  decades,  leaping  as  it  were  at  a 
bound  over  stages  of  development  which  other  nations  spent 
weary  centuries  in  traversing — this  is  the  amazing  achieve- 
ment of  Japan.  Such  a  people  is  worthy  of  our  careful 
study. 

Inquiry  regarding  the  early  history  of  Japan  speedily 
brings  the  investigator  to  a  point  where  facts  are  shrouded 
in  myth  and  legend.  Ethnologists  have  long  speculated  re- 
garding the  origin  of  the  curious  white  Ainus,  of  whom  about 
17,600  still  remain  in  Yezo  and  the  Kurile  Isles.  Doctor 
William  Elliot  Griffis  believes  the  Ainus  to  be  of  Aryan 
stock.  He  gives  an  interesting  account  of  their  coming  to 
prehistoric  Japan,  and  shows  how  the  Ainu  and  Yamato 
peoples  struggled  during  two  thousand  years  for  supremacy 
until  the  fusion  of  races  made  the  present  Japanese  nation. 
He  places  this  prehistoric  period  prior  to  552  A.  D.,  and 
divides  the  subsequent  history  into  four  periods:  military 
and  civil  conquest  552-1192;  establishment  of  feudalism 
1192-1604;  Yedo  period  of  the  Shogunate  1604-1868;  Mi- 
kado period  of  modern  development  1868-1900;  and  the 
period  of  world  relationships  1900  to  the  present  time.  He 
declares  that  the  conclusion  of  nearly  thirty  years  of  scien- 
tific investigation  by  native  Japanese  men  of  science  is,  in 
Professor  Koganei's  verdict,  that  "the  Mikado's  realm  was 
once  an  Ainu  realm";  and  that  his  "own  opinion  is  that  the 
Ainu  once  occupied  the  whole  archipelago  of  Japan.  The 
oldest  names  of  the  mountains  and  rivers  are  not  Japanese 
but  Ainu.  Made  up  of  four  of  the  strong  races  of  mankind, 
Aryan,  Semitic,  Malay,  and  Tartar,  there  was  no  such  thing 
as  a  Japanese  nation  until  1192  A.  D.;  and  the  fusion  was 
not  complete  until  much  later.  Increasing  harmony  among 
scholars,  archaeologists,  ethnologists,  critical  reading  of  the 
Kojiki,  or  ancient  records,  712  A.  D.,  all  point  to  the  fact 
that  the  basic  stock  of  the  Japanese  of  to-day  is  Ainu. 
That  is,  the  Japanese  are  as  much  Aryan — whatever  that 
may  be — as  any  other  stock  perhaps  on  earth.  Leaving 
diplomacy  to  settle  political  questions,  let  us  hold  to  science. 


230  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

After  forty-six  years'  study  of  the  Japanese,  I  cannot  but 
conceive  of  them  as  a  non-Mongolian  people."  Doctor 
Kazutami  Ukita,  Professor  of  History  in  Waseda  Univer- 
sity, Japan,  holds  substantially  the  same  view,  character- 
izing the  Ainus  as  "of  an  ancient  Caucasian  origin  in  race, 
the  descendants  of  those  who  did  not  assimilate  with  the 
Japanese  in  the  main  island  .  .  .  gentle,  honest  and  kind 
though  backward  in  civilization."  He  says  that  "they  can 
be  called  the  American  Indians  of  the  Far  East,"  although 
his  description  of  their  temperament  hardly  fits  that  of  the 
American  aborigines. 

Professor  Edward  S.  Morse,  formerly  professor  in  the 
Imperial  University,  Tokyo,  vigorously  challenges  the  theory 
of  Aryan  origin.  He  holds  that  the  Ainus  were  the  original 
inhabitants  of  Japan,  or  at  any  rate  the  only  ones  that  are 
known,  and  that  they  are  not  Aryans  at  all;  that  the  an- 
cestors of  the  modern  Japanese  were  Mongolians  who  came 
from  the  mainland  of  Asia  by  way  of  Korea;  that  Japanese 
civilization  is  essentially  Mongolian;  that  there  has  been 
some  admixture  of  Ainu  blood,  possibly  of  Malay  and  per- 
haps of  North  American  Indian,  which  was  near  in  Alaska; 
but  that  these  strains  had  no  appreciable  effect  upon  the 
national  type.1 

We  may  leave  to  experts  this  vexed  question  of  ethnologi- 
cal and  antiquarian  research;  and  readers  who  wish  to  delve 
deeply  into  it  may  find  ample  material  in  their  writings.2 
Our  present  concern  is  with  the  Japan  of  more  recent  days. 
Suffice  it  here  that  the  definitely  known  history  of  Japan  is 
far  less  ancient  than  that  of  India,  China,  and  even  Europe, 
and  that  when  the  nation  emerged  from  the  mists  of  the 
prehistoric  era,  it  was  composed  of  several  discordant  ele- 
ments which  were  a  long  time  in  solidifying  into  the  com- 
pact body  with  which  the  world  is  now  familiar.  Professor 
Basil  H.  Chamberlain  declares  that  it  is  one  of  the  certain 

1  Address,  November  24,  1911. 

1  History  of  the  Japanese  People,  by  Captain  Frank  Brinkley;  Japan  and 
Japanese-American  Relations  (Proceedings  of  Conference  at  Clark  University, 
November,  1910);  History  of  Japan,  by  Murdock;  The  Mikado's  Empire, 
by  W.  E.  Griffis;  The  Ainu  of  Japan,  by  John  Batchelor. 


JAPAN  AND  THE  JAPANESE 


231 


results  of  investigation  that  the  first  glimmer  of  genuine 
Japanese  history  dates  from  the  fifth  century  after  Christ; 
that  the  accounts  of  what  happened  in  the  sixth  century 
must  be  received  with  caution;  and  that  back  of  that  period, 
we  enter  the  realm  of  national  mythology  and  legends,  char- 
acterized by  miraculous  impossibilities  and  chronology  pal- 
pably fraudulent.1 

Modern  Japan  has  passed  considerably  beyond  the  limits 
of  ancient  Japan  in  territory  as  well  as  population,  as  the 
following  table  shows: 


ABBA  IN 
SQUARE  MILES 

POPULATION 

Japan  proper  

148,756 

56,860,735 

Korea  

84,738 

16,913,224 

Taiwan  (Formosa)  

13,944 

3,710,848 

Karafuto  (Japanese  Saghalien)  

13,253 

95,194 

260,691 

77,580,001 

Tokyo,  the  capital,  with  2,033,320  inhabitants,  is  the 
metropolis  of  the  Far  East.  Osaka  is  the  second  city  of 
Japan,  with  1,387,366,  and  Kyoto  follows  with  508,068.  A 
half-dozen  other  cities  are  of  good  size  and  are  rapidly 
growing.  Twelve  million  six  hundred  and  sixty-nine  thou- 
sand six  hundred  and  thirty-five  people  live  in  cities  of 
more  than  10,000  inhabitants,  according  to  the  last  census. 

The  average  number  of  foreigners  residing  in  Japan  in 
recent  years  is  about  18,000,  of  whom  approximately  three- 
fifths  are  Chinese,  and  the  remainder  British,  German, 
American,  French,  and  Russian  in  the  order  named,  al- 
though the  number  of  Germans  was  greatly  lessened  during 
the  European  War.  The  territory  of  Japan  proper  is  smaller 
than  that  of  California,  but  its  population  is  twenty-one 
times  larger.  If  we  imagine  half  the  people  of  the  United 
States  packed  into  California,  we  shall  have  an  idea  of 
the  density  of  population  in  Japan.  The  situation  is  anal- 

1  Article  in  The  Japan  Weekly  Mail,  December  23,  1911. 


232  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

ogous  to  that  of  the  British  Islands,  which,  with  an  area 
of  121,633  square  miles,  has  45,370,530  inhabitants.  The 
combined  area  of  Japan  and  all  its  dependencies  is  less  than 
that  of  Texas,  but  the  population  is  sixteen  times  greater. 

To  the  visitor  Japan  is  one  of  the  most  attractive  coun- 
tries in  the  world.  One  can  never  forget  the  charm  of  its 
hospitality,  the  neatness  of  the  homes  and  villages,  and  the 
courageous  energy  with  which  the  people  are  grappling  with 
their  new  and  difficult  problems.  The  first  view  lives  long 
in  one's  memory — the  serrated  mountains  sharply  outlined 
against  the  sky;  the  thatched  houses  of  the  villages  nestling 
at  their  feet;  the  neatly  divided  plots  of  rice-fields  on  the 
lowlands;  the  gleaming  water  of  the  bay  dotted  by  quaint 
sampans  sculled  by  half-naked  boatmen;  the  island  made 
famous  by  the  landing  of  Commodore  Perry  in  1853;  the 
grim  fortifications  guarding  the  harbor  entrance;  and,  as 
we  steam  slowly  onward,  the  busy  city  of  Yokohama,  with 
its  modern  buildings  and  the  countless  funnels  and  masts 
of  its  world-wide  commerce;  while,  towering  above  all,  the 
snow-covered  monarch  of  this  matchless  scene,  is  majestic 
Fujiama,  the  sacred  mountain  of  Japan. 

Closer  acquaintance  deepens  the  favorable  first  impres- 
sion. Physically,  Japan  is  very  beautiful — a  land  of  hills 
and  valleys,  of  rushing  streams  and  rich  bottom-lands. 
Kanazawa  is  one  of  the  scenic  cities  of  the  world,  while 
the  view  from  the  mountain  above  the  Bay  of  Tsugaru 
amply  repays  a  journey  across  Japan.  "Do  not  use  the 
word  magnificent  until  you  have  seen  Nikko"  is  a  Japanese 
proverb  which  many  a  visitor  has  echoed.  The  trip  from 
Tokyo  to  the  mountain  resort  of  Karuizawa  will  never  be 
forgotten  by  one  who  has  taken  it,  and  the  railway  journey 
from  Kyoto  to  Tsu  is  through  a  region  of  fascinating  beauty. 
Foreign  residents  have  grown  weary  of  the  praises  of  Fu- 
jiama; but  Americans  are  forever  telling  of  Niagara  Falls 
and  Europeans  of  Mt.  Blanc,  and  why  should  not  Japanese 
love  and  revere  their  royal  mountain?  We  were  so  fortu- 
nate as  to  be  in  Japan  in  the  famous  cherry-blossom  season. 
The  trees  are  not  cultivated  for  their  fruit,  but  simply  from 


JAPAN  AND  THE  JAPANESE  233 

love  of  the  beautiful  the  people  have  set  out  so  many  that 
their  cities  and  villages  are  literally  abloom  with  the  deli- 
cate pink  and  white  flowers.  When  to  these  are  added  the 
deeper  tints  of  the  peach  and  camellia,  the  purple  of  violets, 
the  white  and  purple  of  stately  magnolias,  and  the  rich 
yellow  of  the  fields  of  rape-seed,  the  traveller  feels  as  if  he 
were  in  some  vast  conservatory. 

The  high  cultivation  of  the  soil  adds  to  the  effect.  Not  a 
weed  is  permitted  to  grow.  Not  a  foot  of  available  land  is 
wasted.  Even  the  hillsides  are  terraced  to  the  very  sum- 
mits, sometimes  by  almost  incredible  labor.  Rice  is  the 
staple  product  wherever  the  land  can  be  flooded.  But  we 
saw  many  fields  of  wheat,  sowed  not  broadcast  as  in  America, 
but  in  rows  which  are  carefully  hoed.  Considerable  space 
is  devoted  to  rape-seed,  from  which  oil  is  extracted  for  both 
cooking  and  illuminating,  while  vegetable-gardens,  tea- 
bushes,  mulberry-trees,  and  a  species  of  palm  are  often  seen. 
The  fields  are  pleasantest  from  a  respectful  distance,  as  dis- 
agreeable refuse  is  the  favorite  fertilizer.  Even  in  Tokyo, 
at  the  time  of  our  visit,  there  were  no  sewers  except  street- 
gutters,  but  every  scrap  of  household  waste  was  scrupu- 
lously preserved  in  earthen  jars  and  collected  every  morning 
for  use  on  the  farms  and  gardens. 

Sanitary  laws  are  strict  and  are  enforced  with  varying 
degrees  of  energy.  Epidemics  are  carefully  guarded  against. 
In  Osaka,  we  saw  municipal  house-cleaning  on  a  large  scale. 
A  suspicion  that  bubonic  plague  was  present  having  injured 
the  business  of  the  city,  the  suspected  quarter  was  visited 
by  a  swarm  of  inspectors  who  entered  every  house,  removed 
furniture,  took  up  matting,  pulled  down  ceilings  and  swept 
out  dirt,  while  the  unhappy  inhabitants  looked  on  in  help- 
less dismay.  The  streets  were  filled  with  the  smoke  of  the 
burning  debris.  Factory  conditions  are  not  so  well  watched, 
as  we  shall  have  later  occasion  to  note. 

Japanese  conceptions  of  comfort  differ  from  ours.  Their 
houses  are  scantily  furnished.  There  are  no  beds,  the  Japa- 
nese simply  spreading  their  quilts  on  the  matting  which 
covers  the  floor.  Chairs  are  unknown  except  in  a  few 


234  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

Europeanized  homes.  People  sit  on  the  floor  with  their 
legs  under  them  in  a  way  which  a  foreigner  soon  finds  in- 
tolerably painful.  The  railway-cars  in  which  we  travelled 
had  seats,  but  we  were  usually  the  only  persons  in  them 
whose  feet  were  on  the  floor.  Our  fellow  passengers  had 
slipped  off  their  sandals  and  tucked  their  feet  under  them 
on  the  seats. 

The  village  Japanese  are  a  cleanly  people  after  their 
manner,  but  that  is  somewhat  peculiar  from  a  Western  view- 
point. The  hotels  conducted  for  foreigners  in  the  ports 
and  the  larger  cities  of  the  interior  have  all  modern  con- 
veniences; but  in  the  smaller  towns  the  inns  are  "native 
style."  The  bathtubs — wooden  boxes  with  little  stoves 
on  one  side — are  filled  with  water  in  the  morning,  and  when 
guests  arrive  the  fire  is  started,  soon  making  the  water  hot 
enough  to  stew  one.  When  the  first  arrival  has  bathed,  the 
thrifty  proprietor  has  no  idea  of  wasting  all  that  hot  water, 
nor  does  the  next  guest  expect  him  to  do  so.  So  the  new- 
comer willingly  bathes  in  the  same  water.  Later  guests  do 
likewise,  and  the  last  traveller,  if  he  is  a  foreigner,  discreetly 
decides  to  postpone  his  bath  until  the  next  morning.  The 
Japanese  do  not  regard  it  as  good  form  to  use  soap  in  such 
a  bathtub  as  it  would  discolor  the  water  for  subsequent 
users.  Unhappily,  I  did  not  know  this  when  I  reached  my 
first  inn,  and  as  I  was  covered  with  the  dust  of  a  hot  jour- 
ney, I  fear  that  I  gave  the  next  bather  reason  to  use  strong 
language. 

Neither  houses,  schools,  nor  public  buildings  are  ade- 
quately heated.  Furnaces  are  almost  unknown,  and  the 
scanty  warmth  of  a  few  pieces  of  charcoal  is  poor  protec- 
tion against  the  chill  winds  that  easily  find  their  way 
through  the  lightly  built  walls  and  loosely  fitting  doors  and 
windows.  The  ordinary  dress  of  both  sexes  is  cut  so  low 
in  the  neck  as  to  expose  the  upper  part  of  the  chest.  How- 
ever abundant  the  body  clothing  may  be,  the  legs  are  often 
bare  below  the  knees,  and  sockless  feet  are  thrust  into  the 
straps  of  straw  or  wooden  sandals,  not  only  in  summer  but 
in  winter.  As  I  wrote  on  the  train  with  my  overcoat 


JAPAN  AND  THE  JAPANESE  235 

closely  buttoned,  the  bare  feet  and  ankles  of  a  three-year- 
old  child  peeped  from  under  the  folds  of  an  apparently  ex- 
pensive dress.  Of  the  193  people  whom  I  had  the  curiosity 
to  count  hi  a  few  minutes  on  the  streets  of  Tokyo,  130  were 
either  barefooted  or  wore  only  a  sandal  which  protected 
the  sole  from  pebbles;  59  had  a  thin  white  cotton  cloth 
wrapped  around  the  foot,  the  calf  of  the  leg  often  being 
bare;  and  only  4  wore  European  shoes. 

It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  this  habitual  exposure  so 
hardens  the  people  that  they  suffer  no  ill  effects.  It  may 
indeed  dull  their  sensibilities  to  some  extent,  but  it  does 
not  relieve  them  from  the  consequences.  Half  the  chil- 
dren I  saw  had  colds.  Throat  and  lung  diseases  are  alarm- 
ingly prevalent  and  tuberculosis  is  the  scourge  of  Japan. 

In  the  Japanese  code  of  good  manners  it  is  considered 
bad  form  to  show  emotion.  One  must  not  storm  in  anger  or 
sob  in  grief.  Stoical  self-control  when  others  are  excited, 
an  impassive  countenance  when  under  critical  observation 
— these  are  Japanese  virtues.  The  more  mercurial  Korean 
and  most  white  men  manifest  their  feelings  in  their  faces. 
Not  so  the  Japanese.  They  are,  as  a  rule,  outwardly  calm, 
although  they  may  be  inwardly  boiling.  It  is  not  always 
prudent,  therefore,  to  infer  their  real  sentiments  from  their 
public  manner.  This  is  not  hypocrisy;  it  results  from  their 
conviction  that  a  self-respecting  man  does  not  parade  his 
private  sentiments  before  strangers. 

And  yet  the  people  are  the  most  charming  of  Orientals  to 
meet,  if  we  may  judge  from  our  experience.  We  travelled 
many  hundreds  of  miles  in  Japan,  mingled  with  the  crowds 
in  cities  and  villages,  visited  shops,  offices,  factories,  homes, 
Buddhist,  Shinto,  and  Christian  places  of  worship,  schools 
of  all  kinds  and  even  military  posts;  and  we  were  uniformly 
treated  with  the  utmost  courtesy.  I  did  not  see  a  fight  in 
Japan,  and  a  drunken  man  only  once.  Nobody  was  rude, 
but  every  one  was  smilingly  polite  and  ready  to  show  every 
kindness. 

The  traveller  is  sometimes  misled  by  this  universal 
politeness,  for  it  occasionally  leads  the  Japanese  to  smile 


236  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

affably  and  bow  assent  to  his  questions  whether  they  under- 
stand him  or  not.  You  ask  whether  the  post-office  "is  on 
this  street,"  and  when  you  receive  what  you  regard  as  a 
pleasant  affirmation  in  reply,  you  tramp  contentedly  on- 
ward, only  to  find  later  that  the  post-office  is  not  on  that 
street.  The  Japanese  did  not  mean  to  deceive  you,  but  he 
did  not  understand  you.  He  was  too  polite  to  tell  you 
that  you  had  not  made  your  meaning  clear,  so  he  courteously 
expressed  assent. 

It  is  said  that  two  American  women  awoke  one  night 
to  find  a  burglar  standing  at  the  foot  of  their  bed.  He 
suavely  asked  for  money.  The  frightened  ladies  said  that 
all  their  money  was  locked  up,  that  they  were  American 
ladies  and  could  not  get  out  of  bed  when  a  man  was  in 
the  room,  but  that  if  he  would  step  out  while  they  dressed, 
they  would  get  the  money  for  him.  The  burglar  actually 
complied  with  the  request,  going  out  of  the  room  and 
nearly  closing  the  door,  simply  keeping  one  foot  in  the 
opening,  "not  necessarily  for  publication  but  merely  as  a 
guarantee  of  good  faith,"  while  the  modest  maidens  arrayed 
themselves  for  such  nocturnal  company.  Then  he  again 
entered.  By  this  time,  however,  the  nerves  of  one  of  the 
young  women  gave  way  in  a  scream,  whereupon  the  burglar 
snatched  the  pocketbook  and  ran,  doubtless  distressed  that 
he  was  under  the  disagreeable  necessity  of  acting  so  rudely. 

The  national  politeness,  while  very  delightful  to  the 
traveller,  does  not  necessarily  argue  superior  moral  qualities. 
The  characteristic  vices  of  Japan  are  substantially  the 
same  as  those  of  Europe  and  America,  and  some  of  them 
are  far  more  general.  If  the  excitable  Anglo-Saxon  goes 
wrong,  he  is  apt  to  make  himself  a  nuisance  in  public, 
where  he  attracts  instant  attention.  The  Japanese  is 
more  even-tempered  and  prides  himself  on  concealing  his 
emotions;  but  in  his  code  of  morals,  certain  vices  are  not 
reckoned  so  heinous  as  we  reckon  them.  But  this  subject 
belongs  in  another  chapter. 

The  Japan  of  to-day  is  a  curious  mixture  of  the  antique 
and  the  modern.  I  saw  a  man  riding  a  new  bicycle,  wear- 


JAPAN  AND  THE  JAPANESE  237 

ing  a  derby  hat,  cutaway  coat,  shirt,  collar,  cuffs  and  neck- 
tie; but  his  single  loose  lower  garment  streamed  behind 
him  exposing  a  pair  of  bare  legs,  and  his  feet  were  naked 
save  for  clumsy  wooden  sandals.  He  was  a  type  that  we 
saw  in  many  other  cities.  European  dress,  however,  has 
become  common  in  the  capital  and  port  cities.  I  found  a 
number  of  high  officials,  including  Prince  Ito,  in  frock 
coats,  and  these  garments  and  silk  hats  are  numerous  among 
the  guests  at  the  best  social  functions. 

Facilities  for  intercommunication  are  well  developed. 
Eight  daily  newspapers  in  English  and  over  three  hundred 
in  Japanese  have  growing  circulations.  The  leading  cities 
have  street-cars,  telegraphs  and  telephones,  electric  lights, 
government  and  commercial  buildings  of  modern  architec- 
ture, and  streets  so  hard  and  smooth  and  clean  as  to  excite 
wonder  and  admiration. 

The  prevalence  of  English  signs  is  a  great  convenience  to 
the  Western  traveller.  One  rarely  sees  Russian,  German 
or  French  signs,  but  English  are  numerous.  Railway-tickets 
are  printed  in  English  on  one  side  and  Japanese  on  the 
other.  At  the  stations  the  names  of  the  towns  are  printed 
in  Japanese  and  English.  On  the  cars  the  designations  of 
class  and  destination  are  given  in  both  English  and  Japa- 
nese. English  notices  tell  you  not  to  put  your  head  out 
of  the  window  and  not  to  stand  on  the  platform.  Some- 
times the  wording  is  rather  odd,  as  when  one  is  warned: 
"No  admission  to  enter,"  but  the  meaning  is  usually 
clear. 

The  efforts  of  Japanese  shopkeepers  to  attract  English 
visitors  result  in  some  amusing  struggles  with  our  lan- 
guage. Every  returning  traveller  brings  a  sheaf  of  stories 
to  chuckle  over  with  his  friends.  You  observe  that  in  one 
place  "Printiny  is  Done,"  and  that  in  another  "Drugs 
Apothecary  Sell."  A  sign  on  a  tailor's  shop  hospitably 
announces  that  "Respectable  Ladies  and  Gentlemen  are 
Invited  to  come  in  and  have  Fits."  An  express-office  truly 
says  that  "Baggage  is  Sent  in  Every  Direction";  a  fur 
dealer's  sign  vouchsafes  the  disquieting  information  that 


238  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

"Furs  are  Made  from  our  Skin  or  Yours;"  and  an  antique 
shop  naively  admits  that  "Antique  Curios  are  Bought, 
Sold  and  Made."  A  Japanese  in  applying  to  a  London 
newspaper  for  a  position  as  correspondent  from  Japan,  after 
describing  in  detail  his  other  qualifications,  added:  "As  for 
my  knowledge  of  English  and  capacity  of  journalistic  work, 
I  cannot  myself  say  much  for  them,  but  you  may  perhaps 
be  able  to  roughly  estimate  them  by  these  lines.  With 
regard  to  my  personal  reliability  and  honest  character  I 
can,  however,  unscrupulously  vouchsafe  them."  If  we  are 
disposed  to  smile  at  such  mistakes,  we  may  discreetly  re- 
member that  even  the  courtesy  and  impassivity  of  the 
Japanese  countenance  are  often  severely  taxed  to  keep  from 
uproarious  laughter  over  the  worse  blunders  of  Americans 
in  trying  to  use  the  Japanese  language. 

Thousands  of  educated  Japanese  speak  English  with 
accuracy,  and  many  thousands  more  are  acquiring  it.  At 
all  the  leading  hotels  and  railway-stations  and  on  most  of 
the  trains,  we  found  one  or  more  Japanese  who  spoke  Eng- 
lish, and  an  American  or  Englishman  who  knows  no  lan- 
guage but  his  own  seldom  has  any  serious  difficulty  in 
travelling  about  the  country.  Indeed  English  is  now  being 
taught  in  the  public  schools  and  in  the  universities,  and 
lecturers  from  the  West  can  find  audiences  to  which  they 
can  deliver  their  message  without  an  interpreter. 

The  railway  service  is  excellent.  Five  thousand  four 
hundred  and  seventy-two  miles  of  track  in  a  country  so 
limited  in  area  afford  good  transportation  facilities.  First, 
second,  and  third  class  cars  are  run  on  most  trains;  but  there 
is  not  so  much  difference  in  the  equipment  of  the  cars  as 
in  the  number  of  passengers.  A  fare  of  one  sen  (half  a  cent) 
a  mile  crowds  the  third  class  cars  with  the  lowest  classes. 
A  two-sen  rate  gives  reasonable  comfort  in  the  second-class 
cars  with  their  long  upholstered  side-seats  and  lavatories. 
We  found  this  class  quite  satisfactory,  with  middle-class 
Japanese,  line  officers  of  the  army,  and  missionaries  as  typi- 
cal fellow-passengers.  The  first-class  cars  attract  only  a 
very  few  persons  who  are  willing  to  pay  three  sen  a  mile 


JAPAN  AND  THE  JAPANESE  239 

for  the  probability  of  having  a  compartment  largely  to 
themselves.  There  is  none  of  the  fussy  calling  for  tickets 
every  hour  or  two  that  is  such  a  nuisance  on  American  rail- 
ways. The  passenger  shows  his  ticket  to  the  gateman  be- 
fore entering  the  train,  and  to  the  guard  that  he  may  know 
the  class,  and  that  is  the  end  of  it  till  the  ticket  is  surren- 
dered at  the  gate  after  leaving  the  train  at  the  destination. 
There  is  no  separate  compartment  for  smoking,  but  both 
sexes  smoke  incessantly  in  the  cars  of  all  classes. 

The  popular  mode  of  local  conveyance  is  the  jinrikisha, 
a  tiny,  light,  two-wheeled  affair,  seating  one  person,  and 
whose  invention  the  American  Griffis  attributes  to  a  Japa- 
nese and  the  Japanese  Nitobe  to  an  American  named  Goble. 
I  mentally  doff  my  hat  as  I  think  of  the  men  who  draw  it. 
Of  the  scores  that  I  used  at  various  times  the  typical  one 
wore  even  in  cold  weather  a  single,  close-fitting  cotton 
upper  garment,  thin,  tight,  very  short  drawers,  and  straw 
sandals.  He  could  not  have  weighed  more  than  a  hundred 
and  fifteen  pounds,  while  the  jinrikisha  and  I  together  tipped 
the  beam  at  over  two  hundred.  But  that  little  fellow  drew 
me  five  miles  at  a  fast  trot,  which  slowed  into  a  walk  only 
a  few  minutes  at  a  particularly  steep  place.  I  gasped 
when  I  learned  that  the  fare  was  sixteen  sen  (eight  cents). 
I  felt  ashamed  to  pay  him  such  a  sum;  but  my  host  ad- 
vised me  not  to  give  more,  saying  that  the  prices  are  now 
much  higher  than  formerly,  and  that  soft-hearted  visitors 
make  things  harder  for  residents.  In  Kanazawa  we  rode 
up  a  long  hill  in  a  cold,  heavy  rain.  When  I  asked  the  charge 
the  men,  with  smiles  and  bows  and  profuse  apologies,  said 
that  they  would  have  to  ask  for  more  than  the  usual  rate 
because  of  the  storm.  What  was  that  extra  charge  ?  Nine 
rin — less  than  half  a  cent  of  American  money.  We  used 
scores  of  jinrikishas  in  various  parts  of  the  empire,  and 
we  invariably  found  the  men  patient,  polite,  good-natured 
and  with  amazing  powers  of  endurance.  Colonel  Davis,  of 
Kyoto,  laughed  when  I  spoke  of  their  runs  with  me,  and 
said  that  they  often  made  fifty  miles  a  day.  I  have  bumped 
my  head  often  enough  in  entering  their  doors  to  give  me 


240  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

painful  proof  that  the  Japanese  are  a  small  race,  but  their 
bodies  are  all  bone  and  sinew. 

It  is  about  as  difficult  to  get  an  unprejudiced  and  dispas- 
sionate opinion  of  the  Japanese  people  as  it  is  to  get  one  of 
Theodore  Roosevelt,  William  Jennings  Bryan,  or  Lloyd 
George.  Each  observer  is  prone  to  look  through  the  haze 
which  has  been  created  by  his  own  imagination,  and  he 
glorifies  or  defames  in  accordance  with  his  preconceived 
ideas.  Some  writers  laud  the  Japanese  with  fulsome 
eulogy,  magnifying  their  virtues  and  minimizing  their  vices 
— a  nation  of  saints  before  whose  perfection  Europeans  and 
Americans  should  veil  their  faces  in  shame.  I  have  listened 
to  adulatory  speeches  of  this  kind  which,  if  I  were  a  sensible 
Japanese,  I  would  deprecate  as  flattery  too  gross  to  be  pleas- 
ant or  helpful.  Other  writers  exhaust  their  vocabulary  in 
denunciation  and  abuse,  alleging  that  the  real  Japan  is  not 
what  Americans  innocently  imagine  it  to  be,  but  "the  Japan 
of  farms  and  factories  and  fishermen,  ruled  by  a  little  group 
of  ambitious  statesmen,  and  dominated  by  the  imperialistic 
aims  which  dominated  Germany";  that  "in  Japan  we  see 
a  power  still  partially  under  the  influence  of  barbaric  tra- 
ditions of  warfare  and  conquest,  and  yet  possessed  of  all 
the  weapons  and  powers  of  the  most  enlightened  countries"; 
that  "she  maintains  a  double  standard  of  conduct — one 
for  use  with  strong  nations,  the  other  for  use  with  weak 
ones";  that  "her  boasted  progress  has  consisted  in  imitating 
the  inventions  and  discoveries  of  Western  nations" ;  and  that 
"we  should  beware  of  the  reports  of  American  visitors  to 
Japan  who  have  been  dined  and  flattered,  and  in  some  cases 
decorated  by  the  Emperor,  until  they  have  been  hypno- 
tized and  have  returned  to  America  to  spread  rosy  impres- 
sions of  a  Japan  whose  virtues  and  good  intentions  exist 
only  hi  their  own  imaginations."  l 

It  is  undeniable  that  the  world's  sympathy  with  Japan 
has  materially  lessened  since  the  war  with  Russia.  This 
may  be  due  in  part  to  the  fact  that  it  is  human  nature  to 
sympathize  with  the  under  man,  and  that  the  mingled  ad- 

1  Quotations  are  from  Japan  and  America,  by  Carl  Crow. 


JAPAN  AND  THE  JAPANESE  241 

miration  and  pity  which  were  evoked  by  the  spectacle  of  a 
little  nation  attacking  mighty  Russia  were  no  longer  needed 
when  the  little  nation  emerged  as  proud  victor.  Western 
nations  began  to  realize,  too,  that  the  war  had  made  Japan 
a  factor  in  world  problems  and  a  rival  in  the  Far  East 
which  must  hereafter  be  reckoned  with,  and  there  was  some 
disquietude  as  to  whether  the  new  rival  would  introduce 
additional  complications.  Triumphant,  imperial  Japan, 
proposing  to  be  mistress  of  the  Pacific  Ocean,  and  with  an 
army  and  navy  which  enable  her  to  make  the  claim  good, 
is  not  so  appealing  an  object  to  grow  sentimental  over  as 
a  small  country  fighting  for  its  life  against  one  three  tunes 
its  size. 

The  wrath  of  numerous  war  correspondents  has  been 
another  factor  in  the  change  of  public  sentiment.  They 
eagerly  flocked  to  the  Far  East  at  the  outbreak  of  hostilities 
with  Russia,  only  to  find  their  high  hopes  for  good  copy 
destroyed  by  polite  but  inexorable  Japanese  officials,  who 
kept  them  cooling  their  heels  several  hundred  miles  from 
the  front.  The  sternly  practical  Orientals  were  not  playing 
to  the  galleries  of  Europe  and  America.  They  were  making 
grim  war  and  they  gave  scant  heed  to  ambitious  journalists. 
Indeed  it  was  feared  that  with  the  Russia-Japan  War  the 
era  of  war  correspondents  passed.  Governments  would  not 
permit  inquisitive  and  ubiquitous  reporters  to  herald  their 
plans  and  movements  to  the  world,  and  therefore  to  the 
enemy.  The  resultant  emotions  of  the  correspondents 
could  not  be  expressed  in  anything  short  of  the  vocabulary 
of  Billy  Sunday's  objurgations  of  the  devil.  As  these  war 
correspondents  included  influential  writers  who  had  free 
access  to  the  columns  of  the  greatest  daily  newspapers  and 
magazines,  the  effect  was  soon  apparent. 

We  need  not  ascribe  this  criticism  wholly  to  pique. 
Writers  of  such  character  cannot  be  lightly  dismissed. 
Prior  to  the  Russia-Japan  War  Americans  and  Englishmen 
saw  everything  Japanese  through  a  glamour  of  cherry- 
blossoms,  cloisonne",  Satsuma  ware,  quaint  temples,  ancient 
palaces,  polite  men,  daintily  smiling  girls,  romantic  glens 


242  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

and  snowy  Fujiama.  It  was  the  land  of  poetry,  beauty  and 
art.  Mr.  Thomas  F.  Millard  declares  that  the  accounts  of 
it  which  were  so  widely  published  in  Europe  and  America 
were  the  output  of  the  most  skilful  and  systematic  press 
bureau  in  the  world,  and  that  nearly  all  of  the  news  that 
reached  English-speaking  readers  came  through  that  press 
bureau,  whose  deliberate  intent  was  to  extol  everything 
Japanese  and  decry  everything  Russian.  We  are  told  that 
the  closer  and  more  independent  knowledge  that  we  have 
gained  since  the  war  has  dispelled  the  glamour  and  revealed 
the  Japanese  in  their  true  light.  The  reports  given  by  Mr. 
Millard  and  Mr.  F.  A.  McKenzie  of  then'  personal  observa- 
tions in  Korea,  after  the  Japanese  were  in  full  control,  are 
grewsome  reading,1  and  Price  Collier  felt  moved  to  exclaim 
that  "it  is  an  open  question  whether  England's  hypocritical 
and  short-sightedly  selfish  alliance  with  these  varnished 
savages  has  not  done  more  to  menace  Saxon  civilization, 
both  in  Europe  and  America,  than  any  diplomatic  step  that 
has  been  taken  for  centuries." 2 

For  myself,  while  not  blind  to  the  faults  of  the  Japanese, 
I  deplore  such  indiscriminate  condemnation  of  them.  If 
they  are  not  the  lovely  fames  that  Lafcadio  Hearn  pictured 
them,  neither  are  they  the  "varnished  savages"  that  Price 
Collier  called  them.  From  the  huge  mass  of  available  data 
it  is  not  difficult  to  make  a  selection  that  will  apparently 
support  almost  any  preconceived  idea.  But  conclusions 
obtained  in  that  way  are  one-sided.  They  leave  some  facts 
out  of  account,  and  state  others  in  ways  which  make  them 
appear  more  unfavorable  than  they  really  are.  If  one  is 
to  err  at  all,  it  is  better  to  do  so  on  the  side  of  charity,  to 
magnify  good  qualities  rather  than  to  minimize  them.  It  is 
unreasonable  to  expect  an  Asiatic  people  to  exemplify 
within  sixty  years  standards  of  Christian  character  and  con- 
duct which  Europe  and  America  but  imperfectly  exemplify 
after  fifteen  hundred  years.  The  Japanese  have  many  fine 
qualities.  They  also  have  some  grave  defects.  So  have 

1  McKenzie,  The  Unveiled  East ;  Millard,  The  New  Far  East. 
3  England  and  the  English,  p.  243. 


JAPAN  AND  THE  JAPANESE  243 

we.  It  is  easy  to  pick  out  flaws  in  any  people  under  heaven, 
including  our  own.  After  all,  the  Japanese  are  human 
beings  like  ourselves,  and  in  thinking  of  them  we  may  well 
remember  the  words  of  the  poet  Bailey: 

"Men  might  be  better  if  we  better  deemed  of  them." 


CHAPTER  XV 
FUNDAMENTAL  NATIONAL  DISTINCTIONS 

THE  superficial  observer  is  apt  to  comment  upon  the 
essential  similarity  of  the  peoples  of  Japan,  Korea,  and 
China.  It  is  true  that  there  are  points  of  resemblance. 
When  dressed  alike  it  is  not  always  easy  for  a  traveller  to 
distinguish  them.  Certain  manners  and  customs  are  similar, 
too,  as  well  as  some  religious  beliefs,  and  a  general  type  of 
mind  which  may  be  called  Oriental  and  Asiatic  as  distin- 
guished from  Occidental  and  European  or  American. 
Nevertheless,  there  are  fundamental  distinctions  that  must 
be  borne  in  mind  if  the  characteristics  and  problems  of 
these  three  peoples  are  to  be  rightly  understood.  I  do  not 
refer  now  to  physical  distinctions,  but  to  psychological  ones, 
the  real  things  wherein  Japanese,  Chinese,  and  Koreans 
really  differ. 

The  keynote  of  Japan  is  solidarity.  The  individual  is 
nothing;  the  nation  is  everything.  The  Japanese  move  as 
a  unit  in  politics,  in  war,  in  commerce,  and  in  the  daily 
activities  of  life.  How  far  back  this  characteristic  runs  is 
a  disputed  question.  Baron  Kikuchi,  President  of  the  Im- 
perial University  in  Kyoto,  in  an  address  in  New  York  in 
1910,  emphasized  the  unity  of  the  nation  through  a  tradi- 
tional succession  of  twenty-five  unbroken  centuries  of  a 
single  dynasty  in  relation  to  a  people  who  regard  it  with 
profound  veneration.  The  Japanese  appear  to  be  com- 
pletely under  the  spell  of  this  fascinating  conception.  They 
insist  upon  the  indissoluble  relation  of  modern  Japan  to 
ancestral  Japan,  of  the  ancestors  of  the  people  to  the  an- 
cestors of  the  imperial  house.  It  is  not  simply  the  rela- 
tion of  present  Japan  to  its  ancestors,  but  of  many  centuries 
of  Japanese  to  many  centuries  of  imperial  rulers,  the  soli- 
darity of  a  nation  persisting  through  the  ages. 

Professor  Basil  H.  Chamberlain,  however,  scoffs  at  this 

244 


FUNDAMENTAL  NATIONAL  DISTINCTIONS       245 

claim  of  the  Japanese.  He  says:  "The  sober  fact  is  that 
no  nation  probably  has  ever  treated  its  sovereigns  more 
cavalierly  than  the  Japanese  have  done,  from  the  beginning 
of  authentic  history  down  to  within  the  memory  of  living 
men.  Emperors  have  been  deposed,  emperors  have  been 
assassinated;  for  centuries  every  succession  to  the  throne 
was  the  signal  for  intrigues  and  sanguinary  broils.  .  .  . 
An  analysis  of  mediaeval  Japanese  history  shows  that  the 
great  feudal  houses,  so  far  from  displaying  an  excessive 
idealism  in  the  matter  of  fealty  to  one  emperor,  one  lord, 
or  one  party,  had  evolved  the  eminently  practical  plan  of 
letting  their  different  members  take  different  sides,  so  that 
the  family  as  a  whole  might  come  out  as  winner  in  any 
event,  and  thus  avoid  the  confiscation  of  its  lands." 

He  proceeds  to  argue  that  the  whole  superstructure  of 
alleged  Japanese  unity  and  emperor-worship  is  of  modern 
creation — a  purely  manufactured  article  devised  by  astute 
leaders  who  see  that  their  ambitions  to  make  this  com- 
paratively small  nation  a  first-class  power  in  the  world 
cannot  be  realized  unless  they  can  weld  the  people  into  a 
compact  mass  that  will  be  absolutely  amenable  to  their 
leadership,  and  can  be  handled  as  a  solid  body  in  all  its 
relations  with  other  nations. 

Whatever  may  be  the  antiquity  of  this  national  solidarity, 
its  present  existence  and  power  cannot  be  doubted.  An- 
cient or  modern,  natural  or  manufactured,  no  one  can  un- 
derstand the  Japanese  who  fails  to  take  it  into  account — 
a  solemn,  mystical,  and  yet  tremendously  real  and  vital 
fact.  The  submergence  of  the  individual  in  the  mass,  the 
knitting  of  the  entire  body  of  the  people  into  one  com- 
munalistic  system,  has  no  parallel  in  history,  unless  it  be 
among  the  ancient  Peruvians.  Lafcadio  Hearn  knew  and 
loved  old  Japan,  but  he  wrote:  "Personality  has  been 
wholly  suppressed  by  coercion,  the  life  of  every  individual 
being  so  ordered  by  the  will  of  the  rest  as  to  render  free 
action,  free  speaking,  free  thinking  out  of  the  question.  .  .  . 
With  implacable  minuteness,  with  ferocity  of  detail,  every- 
thing was  ordained  for  him,  even  to  the  quality  of  his  foot- 


246  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

gear,  the  cost  of  his  wife's  hair-pin,  and  the  price  of  his 
child's  doll.  .  .  .  The  result  was  to  suppress  all  mental 
and  moral  differentiation,  to  numb  personality,  to  establish 
one  uniform  and  unchanging  type  of  character.  To  this 
day  every  Japanese  mind  reveals  the  lines  of  that  antique 
mould  by  which  the  ancestral  mind  was  compressed  and 
limited." 

The  degree  to  which  this  characteristic  influences  modern 
Japan  may  be  partly  due  to  the  fact  that  feudalism  con- 
tinued in  Japan  until  a  later  period  than  in  any  other  na- 
tion, having  been  abolished  only  a  few  decades  ago.  But 
while  feudalism  has  disappeared  as  a  political  system,  its 
spirit  has  been  merged  into  the  larger  and  more  absolute 
feudalism  of  the  State,  one  vast  system  having  taken  the 
place  of  several  smaller  ones.  Among  themselves,  indeed, 
the  Japanese  have  differed,  and  they  now  differ.  There  are 
clans  and  political  parties  which  sometimes  fiercely  dispute. 
In  recent  years  these  parties  have  become  more  outspoken 
in  the  press  and  in  the  Imperial  Diet.  But  Western  gov- 
ernments will  be  grievously  mistaken  if  they  proceed  on 
the  assumption  that  in  all  international  affairs  the  Japa- 
nese will  not  act  as  a  compact  and  well-disciplined  unit. 

The  Western  world  marvelled  when  Admiral  Togo,  in 
his  famous  telegram  after  the  defeat  of  the  Russian  fleet, 
modestly  ascribed  his  victory  " to  the  virtue  of  the  Emperor" 
and  "the  protection  of  his  ancestors,"  and  "not  to  the  ac- 
tion of  any  human  being."  Western  men  said:  Is  it  pos- 
sible that  an  intelligent  Japanese,  who  had  had  a  modern 
education  and  who  is  said  to  be  in  sympathy  with  Chris- 
tianity, could  make  a  statement  of  that  kind?  But  Ad- 
miral Togo  was  as  intelligible  to  the  Japanese  as  Moses  was 
to  the  victorious  Hebrews  when  he  exclaimed:  "I  will  sing 
unto  Jehovah  for  He  hath  triumphed  gloriously."  The 
Emperor  is  conceived,  not  as  an  individual  temporarily  at 
the  head  of  the  country,  but  as  the  supreme  incarnation  of 
the  communal  life,  the  spirit  and  tradition  and  power  of 
the  nation,  the  "Son  of  Heaven,"  whose  government  is  an 
integral  part  of  "a  line  of  Emperors  unbroken  from  ages 


FUNDAMENTAL  NATIONAL  DISTINCTIONS       247 

eternal,"  as  the  first  article  of  the  Constitution  declares. 
Speaking  of  the  Mikado  as  the  centre  of  the  nation,  I-Ichiro 
Tokutomi  says:  "Considered  as  a  body  politic  it  has  him 
as  its  sovereign,  considered  as  a  distinct  race  it  has  him  as 
its  leader,  considered  as  a  social  community  it  has  him  as 
its  nucleus." 

In  a  very  real  sense,  therefore,  says  Doctor  William  Elliot 
Griffis,  "the  victories  of  Oyama  and  Togo  were  not  theirs 
but  the  nation's.  They  were  literally  the  result  of  all  the 
past  life  and  training  of  the  whole  people.  Admiral  or  field- 
marshal,  like  every  individual  sailor  and  soldier,  considers 
himself  as  but  a  cog  in  the  mighty  wheel  that  grinds  out 
results.  As  life  has  value  only  in  the  line  of  duty  and  is 
worthless  outside  of  loyalty  and  right  doing,  so  also  the 
issue  of  victory  is  that  in  which  personality  is  sunk  utterly. 
The  ' brilliant  virtue'  of  the  Mikado  is  not  a  stock  phrase, 
a  figment  of  imagination;  it  is  a  soul-nerving  reality;  it  is 
Japan's  grandest  asset.  Neither  the  Mikado  nor  his  people 
would  be  what  they  are  except  for  'the  spirits  of  the  an- 
cestors.' Togo's  statement  is  in  harmony  with  all  Japanese 
history,  with  literal  fact  as  determined  by  critical  analysis, 
as  well  as  with  sentiment,  art,  poetry,  mythology,  tradition, 
Bushido  (the  knightly  code),  and  all  that  goes  to  make  up 
the  world  of  thought  and  subconscious  motive  in  the  minds 
of  men  that  fought  the  battle  of  the  Sea  of  Japan.  Togo 
could  make  no  other  answer.  No  true  son  of  Nippon  is 
likely  for  generations  to  come  to  express  his  thoughts  other- 
wise. Be  he  Confucian,  Shintoist,  Buddhist,  or  Christian 
in  religion,  be  he  of  this  or  that  philosophy  in  vogue  among 
us  Occidentals,  he  will  ascribe  no  glory  of  Japanese  victory 
to  'any  human  being'  but  to  the  virtue  of  the  Mikado  and 
to  the  spirits  of  his  imperial  ancestors." 

The  early  literature  of  ancient  Japan  abounds  in  senti- 
ments of  veneration  for  the  Emperor,  such  as:  "Never  die 
unless  for  the  sake  of  the  Emperor";  and  when  the  late 
Emperor  lay  dying,  weeping  and  praying  multitudes  pros- 
trated themselves  before  the  palace  gates  for  whole  days 
and  nights,  unmoved  alike  by  heat  of  sun  and  fall  of  rain. 


248  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

The  keynote  of  China  is  the  direct  opposite  of  this:  it  is 
individualism.  The  Chinese  as  a  man  is  industrious  and 
capable,  often  masterful,  and  able  to  compete  with  any 
other  man  in  the  world.  But  he  does  not  take  naturally  to 
co-operative  enterprises.  He  is  not  good  in  team-work. 
The  Chinese  are  individually  strong  but  collectively  weak. 
They  are  deficient  in  organization.  Everywhere  in  China 
you  see  evidences  of  this  characteristic.  Commercially, 
although  the  Chinese  are  the  best  business  men  in  Asia, 
it  is  difficult  to  form  a  large  Chinese  corporation  which  can 
hold  together  and  do  efficient  work.  Politically,  there  is  a 
conspicuous  absence  of  centralization.  The  Emperor  was 
traditionally  venerated  as  the  Son  of  Heaven;  but  the  peo- 
ple regarded  him  as  an  alien  Manchu  and  they  chafed  under 
his  rule.  The  nation  was  honeycombed  with  anti-dynastic 
societies  which  were  continually  plotting  the  overthrow  of 
the  Emperor  and  his  whole  line.  When  the  revolution  was 
accomplished  a  republic  was  declared  under  a  presidency 
which  had  five  incumbents  in  half  a  dozen  years.  Indi- 
vidualism characterizes  the  nation.  Village  life  is  largely 
communal  under  local  elders;  but,  taking  China  as  a  whole, 
it  is  every  man  for  himself. 

Thus  there  is  none  of  that  sense  of  national  unity  which 
is  so  evident  in  Japan.  The  people  of  the  south  know  little 
and  care  less  about  the  people  of  the  north.  The  inhabi- 
tants of  Szechuan  are  almost  as  far  removed  in  sympathy 
from  those  of  Fuh-kien  as  if  they  belonged  to  different  na- 
tions. If  a  war  breaks  out,  large  sections  of  the  country 
are  indifferent.  It  is  a  matter  for  the  Peking  officials  and 
the  governors  of  the  provinces  attacked;  let  them  attend  to 
it.  Probably  many  of  the  Chinese  people  never  knew  that 
there  was  a  war  between  China  and  Japan  in  1894,  and  those 
who  did  know  cared  little  more  than  if  the  war  had  been 
between  Germany  and  Japan.  If  a  foreign  Power  were  to 
obtain  possession  of  a  Japanese  port,  it  would  not  be  able 
to  hire  a  coolie  in  all  Japan  to  fortify  it;  but  when  the 
Germans  seized  Kiao-chou  Bay  in  1897,  although  the 
province  of  Shantung  was  thrown  into  great  alarm,  the 


FUNDAMENTAL  NATIONAL  DISTINCTIONS       249 

German  admiral  had  no  difficulty  in  employing  thousands 
of  Chinese  to  make  the  German  position  impregnable 
against  the  Chinese.  In  like  manner  the  Russians,  when 
they  took  Port  Arthur  under  an  agreement  which  they 
extorted  from  the  Chinese  Government,  found  it  easy  to 
employ  60,000  coolies  to  construct  their  defenses,  while  the 
foreign  legations  in  Peking  fortified  themselves  by  the  aid 
of  Chinese  laborers  within  rifle-shot  of  the  imperial  palace. 

China  is  a  loose  aggregation  of  units  rather  than  a  solid- 
ified nation.  Governors  and  viceroys  are  virtually  inde- 
pendent rulers  who  have  their  own  mints,  their  own  military 
force,  and  who  do  about  as  they  please  as  long  as  they  send 
tribute  to  Peking.  The  Japanese  Government  directs  its 
individual  subjects  and  supports  them  in  their  enterprises; 
but  the  government  of  China  leaves  its  subjects  to  shift 
for  themselves.  Perhaps  this  is  due  in  part  to  the  density 
of  population,  which  makes  the  struggle  for  existence  fiercer 
than  anywhere  else,  and  develops  a  callous  selfishness  as 
well  as  a  spirit  of  self-reliance. 

This  individualism  is  one  of  the  reasons  why  the  present 
transformation  in  China  is  so  significant.  The  new  influ- 
ences which  are  at  work  are  affecting  the  essential  genius 
of  Chinese  life.  They  are  revolutionizing  fundamental 
thoughts  and  relationships.  Railways  and  telegraphs  are 
making  possible  intercommunication  and  a  knowledge  of 
other  parts  of  the  country  and  are  tending  to  develop  a 
consciousness  of  unity  which  have  never  existed  before. 
And  herein  is  large  ground  for  hope.  The  reform  move- 
ments in  China  are  essentially  movements  of  the  people. 
The  government  did  not  lead  them;  it  was  indeed  far  be- 
hind. A  popular  movement  on  so  vast  a  scale  will  proba- 
bly prove  as  irresistible  as  the  similar  movement  was  in 
Europe,  for  it  will  mean  that  the  new  order,  when  once 
established,  will  be  firmly  based  on  the  consent  of  the 
nation. 

In  Japan,  on  the  other  hand,  the  government  is  leading 
the  reconstructive  movements  and  the  people  are  far  in  the 
rear.  The  whole  modern  development  is  directed  by  a 


250  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

comparatively  small  group  of  leaders  who  are  more  or  less 
blindly  followed  by  the  masses  of  the  population.  These 
leaders  are  men  of  splendid  ability,  and  their  ideas  are 
gradually  making  their  way  down  among  the  common 
people;  but  it  will  be  a  long  time  yet  before  the  majority 
of  the  people  of  Japan  will  assert  themselves  as  a  real 
governing  force.  History  shows  that  such  a  situation  is 
not  altogether  reassuring.  It  is  a  great  thing  for  advance 
movements  to  have  the  prestige  of  official  leadership;  but 
unless  there  is  wide  popular  support  based  on  intelligent 
public  sentiment,  changes  in  personnel  may  at  any  time 
result  in  an  alteration  of  policy.  The  increasing  number 
of  men  in  the  upper  classes  who  have  caught  the  spirit  of 
the  modern  world  encourage  the  hope  that  no  reaction  will 
set  in;  but  if  it  ever  should  come,  the  solidarity  of  the 
nation  will  make  it  a  serious  matter.  I  shall  refer  in  a 
later  chapter  to  the  fact  that  underneath  the  autocratic 
party  that  is  now  in  control,  a  progressive  party  is  already 
developing  and  that  its  growth  promises  much  for  the 
future. 

The  keynote  of  Korea  is  not  so  easily  stated  in  one  word. 
We  might  call  it  subjectivity.  The  people  are  less  virile, 
less  ambitious,  less  independent  in  spirit.  They  revered 
then*  Emperor  in  a  general  way,  but  with  none  of  that 
passionate  devotion  which  characterizes  the  Japanese. 
Any  Japanese  will  gladly  give  his  life  for  his  Emperor,  and 
this  is  one  reason  why  Japan  is  such  a  formidable  military 
power.  The  entire  nation  fights,  and  fights  to  the  death 
for  the  Emperor  who  incarnates  the  national  ideals.  Such 
a  sentiment  is  utterly  foreign  to  the  Chinese  mind.  The 
Korean  occupies  a  middle  position  in  this  respect.  Some 
devoted  officials  committed  suicide  when  their  Emperor 
was  humiliated;  but  this  spirit  did  not  characterize  the 
people  as  a  whole.  Even  in  the  most  patriotic  Korean  the 
normal  feeling  was  one  of  wounded  national  pride,  because 
a  foreigner  ruled,  rather  than  of  special  attachment  to  the 
Emperor.  The  Korean  has  so  long  been  oppressed,  he 
feels  so  helpless  between  the  mighty  nations  about  him, 


FUNDAMENTAL  NATIONAL  DISTINCTIONS       251 

that  he  has  settled  into  almost  apathetic  despair.  Indi- 
viduals have  made  heroic  struggles,  but  the  people  as  a 
whole  have  so  long  acquiesced  in  the  inevitable  that  a  cer- 
tain state  of  mind  has  resulted.  The  decisive  methods  of 
the  Japanese  are  doing  much  to  stir  the  Koreans  out  of  this 
apathy,  but  it  still  prevails  to  a  marked  degree.  They 
accept,  often  grudgingly,  the  modern  improvements  that 
the  Japanese  have  introduced;  but  they  show  little  dis- 
position to  make  them  their  own  or  to  bring  in  others. 
They  merely  acquiesce  in  what  the  Japanese  do  and  let  it 
go  at  that.  An  inherent  difficulty  which  runs  deep  and 
affects  many  problems  in  both  church  and  state  is  the  fact 
that  Korea  has  no  middle  class,  no  manufacturing  or  pro- 
fessional class,  no  trained  leaders  of  any  kind.  There  are 
only  two  classes,  the  "noble"  and  the  peasant,  although  it 
would  be  difficult  to  find  men  who  are  less  noble  than  the 
former,  the  yangbans. 

The  Korean  temperament,  too,  is  more  emotional  than 
that  of  the  Japanese  or  Chinese.  It  is  comparatively  easy 
to  reach  his  heart  and  to  arouse  his  sympathies.  This  is 
one  reason  why  Christianity  has  made  more  rapid  progress 
in  Korea  than  in  either  China  or  Japan.  There  are,  of 
course,  other  reasons  for  evangelistic  success  in  Korea, 
which  I  shall  describe  elsewhere,  but  this  temperamental 
condition  is  a  differentiating  factor. 

National  ambitions  also  differ.  The  ambition  of  the 
Japanese  is  that  his  country  shall  be  recognized  as  a  world- 
power.  The  ambition  of  the  Chinese  is  to  advance  his 
personal  interests.  The  ambition  of  the  Korean  is  to  be 
let  alone.  It  was  pathetic  to  see  the  people  flock  to  the 
Salvation  Army  officers.  They  felt  in  a  half-childish  way 
that  the  drums  and  fifes  and  military  imagery  meant  some- 
thing which  would  help  them  to  get  rid  of  the  outsiders  who 
were  disturbing  their  life. 

I  am  aware  of  the  limitations  of  the  distinctions  which 
have  been  indicated.  It  would  be  easy  to  specify  excep- 
tions in  each  country;  but  I  am  now  considering  the  peo- 
ples as  a  whole,  and  these  fundamental  distinctions  run 


252  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

deep  and  affect  many  political,  commercial,  and  missionary 
problems. 

The  Japanese  sensibly  make  no  secret  of  their  ambition. 
The  well-known  Japanese  author,  Professor  Kawakami, 
writes:  "Japan  must  have  a  place  in  the  sun."1  "It  is 
Japan's  mission  to  harmonize  Eastern  and  Western  civiliza- 
tions in  order  to  bring  about  the  unification  of  the  world," 
said  Marquis  Okuma;2  and  in  a  public  address  he  declared: 
"Forty  years  ago  but  an  insignificant  nation  in  the  eye  of 
the  world,  Japan  is  now  regarded  as  one  of  its  strongest 
Powers,  in  a  sense  holding  the  destiny  of  Asia  in  her  hand. 
Henceforth,  in  the  solution  of  the  Eastern  questions,  even 
where  she  does  not  play  a  conspicuous  part,  her  will  cannot 
be  altogether  ignored.  She  has  raised  herself  to  this  high 
position  and  has  determined  to  maintain  it  none  too  soon, 
for  the  object  of  European  anxiety  is  no  longer  the  con- 
tinent of  Africa  alone  but  that  of  Asia  as  well,  with  which 
Japan  is  so  closely  connected;  for,  unless  she  is  strong 
enough  to  make  her  voice  heard  in  the  deliberation  as  to 
measures  for  relieving  that  anxiety,  her  own  safety  might 
be  threatened." 

There  may  be  individuals  here  and  there  who  can  con- 
sistently criticise  Japan  for  cherishing  such  an  ambition, 
but  they  are  not  representative  citizens  of  the  United  States, 
Great  Britain,  France,  Germany,  or  Russia.  Charles  Dick- 
ens found  Americans  so  loudly  asseverating  that  their 
country  was  destined  to  be  the  biggest,  grandest,  most 
glorious  country  on  earth  that  he  good-naturedly  satirized 
us  in  the  pages  of  Martin  Chuzzlewit.  For  generations, 
Fourth  of  July  orations,  congressional  speeches,  and  innu- 
merable newspaper  and  magazine  articles  have  proclaimed 
the  same  tidings  to  a  sceptical  world.  Some  Americans 
talk  as  if  they  had  a  right  to  the  control  of  the  Pacific.  If 
they  were  familiar  with  the  history  of  their  own  country, 
they  would  know  that  the  United  States  did  not  possess  a 
clear  title  to  any  territory  bordering  on  the  Pacific  Ocean 

1  Article  in  the  New  York  Times,  April  9,  1915. 
1  Japan  to  America,  p.  2. 


FUNDAMENTAL  NATIONAL  DISTINCTIONS       253 

till  1846.  Why  should  we  regard  our  claim  to  the  supremacy 
of  the  Pacific  as  superior  to  that  of  nations  which  have 
occupied  territory  on  that  ocean  for  more  than  two  thou- 
sand years?  It  may  be  that  the  Japanese  are  overambi- 
tious  and  offensively  self-assertive.  I  suspect  that  they  are 
and  that  we  ourselves  belong  in  the  same  category.  If  we 
are  disposed  to  persuade  nations  to  adopt  a  more  modest 
and  Christian  attitude  toward  one  another,  we  should  in- 
clude our  own  people  as  well  as  the  Japanese  in  our  well- 
meant  efforts. 


CHAPTER  XVI 
JAPAN  AS  A  MILITARY  POWER 

Is  Japan  physically  able  to  maintain  the  place  in  world 
affairs  which  she  has  attained?  It  is  not  to  the  credit  of 
modern  civilization  that  such  a  question  must  be  con- 
sidered either  by  others  or  by  the  Japanese  themselves. 
Unhappily,  we  have  been  slow  in  emerging  from  the  period 
in  which  there  is  no  international  court  to  which  a  wronged 
nation  may  appeal  for  justice,  and  in  which  national  selfish- 
ness, greed,  and  arrogance  are  often  glorified  as  "patriotism." 
Each  government  has  felt  that  it  must  be  able  to  protect 
itself  or  go  to  the  wall,  and  that  in  the  scramble  for  trade 
and  territory  and  "a  place  in  the  sun"  it  is  every  nation 
for  itself  and  "the  devil  take  the  hindmost."  "A  nation 
must  maintain  its  sea  and  land  forces  at  such  a  point  as 
shall  correspond  with  its  national  strength,"  said  the  Ger- 
man Chancellor  in  an  address  before  the  Reichstag;  other- 
wise "it  would  run  the  risk  of  forfeiting  its  present  place 
among  the  Powers  to  some  stronger  nation  that  is  willing 
to  take  it." 

Japan  is  as  apt  a  pupil  in  war  as  in  peace,  and  Western 
nations  have  done  much  to  convince  her  that  it  was  neces- 
sary to  be.  They  long  acted  on  the  assumption  that  might 
makes  right.  Asia  has  always  acted  on  that  assumption, 
and  recent  experiences  have  not  weakened  the  savage  neces- 
sity. While  Europeans  and  Americans  have  been  talking 
about  "The  Yellow  Peril,"  Asiatics  have  been  talking 
about  "The  White  Peril."  The  impressions  of  the  Japa- 
nese are  voiced  by  Doctor  Toyokichi  lyenaga,  who  grimly 
writes:  "Since  modern  nations  have  erected  their  political 
structures  upon  the  ruins  of  Rome,  the  dominant  note  of 
their  existence  has  been  and  still  is  militarism.  To  join 
their  ranks  the  best  passport  is  martial  prowess.  This  as- 

254 


255 

sertion  is  strikingly  proved  by  the  manner  in  which  Japan 
was  at  last  admitted  into  the  list  of  modern  Powers.  For 
half  a  century  Japan  assiduously  applied  herself  to  the  re- 
construction of  the  arts  of  peace.  She  remodelled  her  edu- 
cational system,  codified  her  laws,  brought  the  adminis- 
tration of  justice  to  the  modern  standard,  consecrated  her 
energy  to  the  cultivation  of  Western  science  and  literature, 
created  the  commercial  and  industrial  middle  class,  opened 
a  Parliament,  and  proclaimed  the  freedom  of  speech,  press, 
and  faith — in  short,  she  completely  reorganized  her  political 
and  social  fabric  upon  the  model  of  the  West.  Did  this 
progress  of  Japan  in  the  way  of  peace  succeed  in  placing 
her  on  an  equal  footing  with  the  Western  nations,  however  ? 
No!  Unpleasant  as  it  may  sound  to  you,  the  position 
which  Japan  coveted  in  the  family  of  nations  was  gained 
only  after  she  had  unwittingly  demonstrated  her  skill  in 
the  game  of  war.  When  in  defense  of  her  national  honor 
and  interests  she  fought  her  great  neighbor  and  won  the 
battles  of  Pyongyang  and  the  Yalu,  Japan  discovered  to  her 
surprise  that  her  prestige  in  the  eyes  of  the  West  had  be- 
come suddenly  enhanced.  And  it  was  only  after  another 
terrible  war,  waged  with  fear  and  trembling  for  her  national 
security,  that  the  frank  recognition  of  the  insular  kingdom 
as  a  great  Power  was  given  by  the  world.  This  is  forsooth 
a  sad  commentary  on  the  militarism  of  the  West.  ...  Is 
there  any  wonder  that  the  conviction  of  dire  necessity  for 
guarding  herself  by  efficient  armament  has  sunk  deep  into 
the  heart  of  Japan?"  1 

The  aggressions  of  European  Powers  in  Asia  and  Africa 
afforded  painful  evidence  that  Japan's  apprehensions  were 
not  without  cause,  and  Italy's  attack  upon  Tripoli  gave  a 
fresh  illustration.  The  wrongs  of  which  the  Italians  in 
Tripoli  complained  could  have  been  remedied  by  peaceful 
means.  But  Italy  wanted  territory,  a  place  where  her 
overcrowded  population  could  colonize  under  her  own  flag 
and  remain  a  material  asset,  instead  of  going  off  to  the 
United  States  and  to  South  America  to  strengthen  other 

1  Article  in  The  Oriental  Review,  June  10,  1911. 


256  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

nations.  Therefore  Italy  plunged  into  a  war  in  order  to 
obtain  a  region  which  she  coveted,  and  which  she  knew  that 
Turkey  had  no  navy  to  defend.  Italian  rule  is  undoubtedly 
better  than  Moslem  rule.  But  this  defense  of  Italy,  which 
is  so  often  urged,  will  not  pass  muster  at  the  bar  of  morality. 
The  fact  that  one  might  use  another  man's  property  more 
wisely  than  he  is  using  it  does  not  justify  one  in  seizing  it 
by  violence  and  murder. 

The  Japanese  were  not  slow  in  taking  the  lesson  to 
heart.  They  realized  that  the  necessity  for  military  and 
naval  strength  in  their  case  was  intensified  by  their  small 
home  territory,  its  inadequate  agricultural  productiveness, 
their  island  position,  then*  dependence  upon  foreign  com- 
merce, and  the  disposition  of  powerful  Western  nations  to 
seize  the  countries  on  the  adjacent  mainland,  whose  enor- 
mous markets  and  resources,  if  in  unfriendly  hands,  would 
isolate  Japan  and  reduce  her  to  a  position  of  weakness  and 
insignificance.  They  understood  perfectly  that  the  Rus- 
sians would  not  permanently  acquiesce  in  exclusion  from  an 
ice-free  port  in  the  North  Pacific.  They  know  that  the  Ko- 
reans and  Chinese  fear  and  dislike  them.  They  know  that 
many  foreigners  throughout  the  Far  East  are  not  friendly 
to  them.  They  believe  too  that  the  position  which  they 
have  won  in  the  world  in  general  and  in  the  Far  East  in 
particular  is  one  which  can  be  held  only  by  military  force. 
Lamentable  it  surely  is  that  Japan's  entrance  into  the  family 
of  nations  should  entail  a  demonstration  of  her  ability  to 
fight  on  equal  terms  with  the  alleged  Christian  Powers  of 
the  West!  Convinced  that  this  must  be  done,  the  Japa- 
nese are  maintaining  their  army  and  navy  at  a  high  stage 
of  efficiency.  One  hears  many  stories  about  a  large  army 
and  enormous  stores  of  munitions  of  war.  It  is  difficult 
to  tell  how  far  they  are  true,  for  government  secrets  are 
more  closely  guarded  than  in  America.  The  reports  are 
probably  exaggerated,  but  no  one  doubts  that  the  Japanese 
are  keeping  themselves  in  a  state  of  effective  military  pre- 
paredness. As  for  the  navy,  in  1894  it  had  a  tonnage  of 
61,000;  hi  1904  of  283,743;  in  1916  of  699,916,  and  large 


JAPAN  AS  A  MILITARY  POWER  257 

additions  have  been  made  since  then.  Japan  is  able  to 
make  her  own  ships  and  cannon,  and  her  gun-factory  at 
Kure  is  one  of  the  largest  and  best-equipped  plants  of  the 
kind  in  the  world. 

Modest  in  size  as  Japan  is,  it  possesses  some  special  ad- 
vantages which  make  it  more  formidable  as  a  fighting  na- 
tion than  its  numerical  strength  and  financial  resources 
might  suggest,  and  as  they  are  important  factors  in  the 
consideration  of  Japan  as  a  world-power,  it  may  be  well  to 
mention  them. 

First:  A  political  organization  able  to  act  quickly  and 
decisively.  Highly  centralized  monarchical  governments 
can  prepare  for  and  wage  war  more  readily  and  effectively 
than  democratic  governments.  This  is  one  of  the  grave  in- 
dictments against  war — it  gives  the  advantage  to  those  forms 
of  government  which  allow  the  least  liberty  to  the  indi- 
vidual and  concentrate  the  most  power  in  a  few  men.  Such 
governments  can  adopt  war  measures  secretly  without  the 
necessity  of  consulting  congresses  and  parliaments,  whose 
members  demand  unlimited  freedom  of  debate,  and  who  are 
sensitive  to  a  public  opinion  represented  by  myriads  of 
inquisitive  and  outspoken  newspapers.  A  democracy  acts 
slowly  and  cumbersomely  in  comparison. 

Second:  A  martial  spirit  pervading  the  entire  popula- 
tion. The  typical  Japanese  is  a  born  soldier  and  he  takes 
naturally  and  with  avidity  to  the  profession  of  arms.  The 
annual  calling  of  young  men  to  the  colors  is  made  an  occa- 
sion of  festivities.  Their  houses  are  decorated  with  flags, 
and  processions  of  friends  and  neighbors  accompany  the 
recruits  to  the  station  with  every  demonstration  of  honor. 
Military  ardor  and  love  of  the  beautiful  are  seldom  united, 
but  they  are  in  the  Japanese.  It  is  true  that  they  do  not 
fight  except  under  provocation;  but,  given  the  provocation, 
they  are  ready  to  meet  it  with  a  swiftness  that  is  apt  to  be 
disconcerting  to  their  enemies.  Their  temperament  is  the 
opposite  of  the  temperament  of  the  Chinese.  The  latter 
are  peaceful  in  disposition,  despising  the  profession  of  arms, 
and,  until  the  aggressions  of  Western  nations  compelled 


258  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

them  to  adopt  a  different  policy,  filled  their  regiments  and 
warships  with  the  offscourings  of  their  population.  The 
Japanese  are  militant  in  disposition.  They  have  a  genius 
for  war.  Feudalism  dominated  Japan  longer  than  any  other 
nation,  and  while  the  system  has  been  overthrown,  the 
feudal  spirit  survives  and  becomes  a  formidable  asset  for 
war.  For  many  centuries  and  until  within  the  memory  of 
men  now  living,  the  ideal  type  of  the  Japanese  was  the 
Knight.  "Among  flowers  the  cherry,  among  men  the  war- 
rior" was  a  popular  sentiment.  "Bushido,  the  Soul  of 
Japan,"  is  "the  Way  of  the  Warrior" — literally,  "Figjiting 
— Knightways"  or  "Teachings  of  Knightly  Behavior."  It 
is  not  surprising  that  such  a  people  quickly  assimilated 
modern  weapons  of  precision  and  in  an  incredibly  brief 
time  learned  to  use  them  efficiently. 

Third:  An  extraordinary  national  unity,  inspired  by  the 
most  intense  and  self-sacrificing  loyalty.  I  have  referred 
in  another  chapter  to  the  solidarity  of  the  Japanese  people. 
The  whole  nation  becomes  a  fighting  machine  in  time  of 
danger.  The  war  with  Russia  illustrated  this  on  a  startling 
scale.  The  civil,  military,  and  naval  departments  of  the 
government  acted  in  absolute  accord.  The  spirit  of  patri- 
otic determination  actuated  not  only  every  soldier  and 
sailor,  but  the  entire  population.  Wives  proudly  saw  their 
husbands  march  away,  and  mothers  committed  suicide  in 
grief  and  shame  when  their  sons  were  pronounced  physically 
disqualified. 

Fourth:  Thorough  preparation.  This  preparation  be- 
gins with  the  boys  in  the  public  schools.  There  is  a  parade- 
ground  in  connection  with  each  one  that  I  saw,  and  a  spa- 
cious hall  for  drill  in  bad  weather.  Light  rifles  are  provided 
and  a  dark-blue  uniform  with  brass  buttons.  The  training 
is  far  from  superficial.  Drills  are  a  regular  feature  of  the 
curriculum.  In  several  cities  that  we  visited  our  hosts  hap- 
pened to  live  near  public-school  buildings,  and  every  day 
I  heard  the  bugle-calls  and  saw  the  platoons  of  boys  march- 
ing and  going  through  the  manual  of  arms  in  businesslike 
fashion.  The  Japanese  believe  in  universal  military  ser- 


JAPAN  AS  A  MILITARY  POWER  259 

vice,  and  every  physically  qualified  man  between  the  ages 
of  seventeen  and  forty  is  potentially  a  soldier.  Provision 
is  made  for  a  few  exemptions  and  for  alternative  service  for 
university  students;  but  the  general  rule  calls  for  two  years 
of  active  service  with  the  colors,  four  years  and  four  months 
in  the  reserve  service,  and  ten  years  in  the  depot  service. 
Japan  therefore  does  not  need  as  large  a  standing  army  as 
some  other  nations,  for  practically  every  man  receives  mili- 
tary training  and,  after  his  return  to  civil  life,  is  amenable 
to  his  country's  summons.  The  number  of  men  actually 
under  arms  at  any  given  time  is,  therefore,  not  important. 
The  entire  able-bodied  population  of  the  country  is  avail- 
able on  instant  call. 

Some  of  the  military  posts  are  the  old  feudal  castles, 
which  were  appropriated  by  the  government  when  feudal- 
ism was  abolished  in  1871.  I  do  not  wonder  that  the  Em- 
peror deemed  it  inexpedient  to  leave  the  great  nobles  in 
possession  of  those  massive  fortifications.  That  at  Nagoya, 
for  example,  stands  in  grounds  of  vast  extent,  and  is  pro- 
tected by  deep  outer  and  inner  moats,  whose  solid  stone 
walls  are  of  a  height  and  thickness  which  would  make 
them  impregnable  against  anything  but  modern  artillery. 
The  labor  of  construction  must  have  been  prodigious. 
The  castle  was  founded  in  1607  by  Yoshinao,  who  received 
the  overlordship  of  the  province  of  Owari  from  his  father, 
the  celebrated  Tokugawa  leyasu.  It  towers  impressively 
above  the  northern  part  of  the  city,  its  famous  golden  dol- 
phins, although  forty-eight  feet  long,  appearing  to  be  of 
modest  size  in  comparison  with  the  huge  building  which, 
as  masters  of  water,  they  were  supposed  to  defend  from  the 
god  of  fire.  Ten  thousand  soldiers  were  stationed  at  the 
castle  at  the  time  of  my  visit,  and  the  hard,  level  parade- 
ground  is  so  vast  that  I  was  told  that  37,000  men  had 
drilled  on  it  at  once.  The  castle  at  Osaka  is  another  no- 
table example.  I  saw  single  stones  which,  as  nearly  .as  I 
could  estimate,  were  forty  feet  long,  twenty  high,  and  eight 
feet  thick,  and  there  were  others  almost  as  large.  Only 
"an  unlimited  command  of  naked  human  strength"  could 


260  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

have  made  possible  those  stupendous  fortifications  in  an 
age  when  our  modern  hoisting-machinery  was  unknown. 
Of  course,  they  were  built  by  forced  labor  and  maintained 
by  tribute  exacted  from  the  wretched  fanners  and  common 
people  over  a  wide  area.  When  feudalism  received  its 
death-blow,  the  people  were  emancipated  from  such  con- 
tributions of  work  and  rice.  The  haughty  lords  were  com- 
pelled to  reside  in  Tokyo,  where  the  Emperor  could  keep 
his  eye  on  them,  and  their  formidable  castles  were  filled  with 
imperial  troops.  Seven  thousand  were  quartered  in  the 
barracks  that  had  been  erected  on  the  Osaka  Castle  grounds, 
and  the  number  appeared  small  in  comparison  with  the 
extent  of  the  preserve. 

Regiments  are  drilled  until  they  are  perfect  fighting 
units.  I  visited  a  number  of  military  posts,  and  although 
I  have  seen  soldiers  of  many  nations,  I  have  never  seen  such 
drilling  as  I  saw  in  Japan.  The  officers  devoted  little  time 
to  those  showy  parades  and  fancy  exercises  which  so  de- 
light spectators  at  an  American  military  post,  and  which 
are  about  as  helpful  as  dancing-lessons  when  fighting-days 
come.  They  made  their  men  trudge  up-hill  and  down  in 
heavy  marching  order,  dig  trenches,  charge  batteries,  fight 
sham  battles,  and  do  everything  just  as  it  must  be  done  in 
real  warfare.  The  house  in  which  I  was  entertained  at 
Kanazawa  was  not  far  from  a  garrison,  and  the  troops  were 
drilling  night  after  night  when  I  went  to  sleep.  I  formed 
the  impression  then  that  when  Japan  did  fight  somebody 
would  get  hurt. 

The  navy  was  working  equally  hard.  "When  matters 
were  growing  serious  in  the  winter  of  1903-4,"  an  observer 
wrote,  "the  Japanese  navy  underwent  a  special  battle- 
training — constant  firing  at  long  range  with  heavy  guns 
under  war  conditions,  torpedo  work  at  night  in  bad  weather, 
using  live  torpedoes,  manoeuvring  at  night  without  lights, 
night-firing,  and  the  rehearsal  of  operations  that  were 
actually  to  form  part  of  the  war  when  it  began." 

The  individual  Japanese  soldier,  while  short  of  stature  as 
all  his  countrymen  are,  is  solid,  sturdy,  patient,  temperate, 


JAPAN  AS  A  MILITARY  POWER  261 

inured  to  hardship,  accustomed  to  an  outdoor  life,  dis- 
ciplined to  the  highest  point  of  a  military  efficiency,  armed 
with  the  most  highly  improved  weapons,  and  unquestioning 
in  obedience  to  his  officers,  who  are  often  hereditary  chiefs 
of  his  clan.  He  was  a  familiar  figure  on  the  streets  of  all 
the  cities  I  visited.  He  invariably  wore  his  belt  and  side- 
arms  and  often  his  gloves,  was  neat  in  appearance,  erect  in 
bearing  and  well  behaved  in  manner. 

After  the  outbreak  of  the  European  War  in  1914,  a  mis- 
sionary in  the  Marshall  Islands  wrote:  "On  the  morning 
of  September  29,  several  Japanese  men-of-war  appeared, 
and  an  armed  force  was  landed  and  the  Japanese  flag  hoisted. 
Although  martial  law  necessarily  prevails,  it  is  in  its  mild- 
est form,  and  all  nationalities  are  treated  with  the  utmost 
courtesy  and  consideration.  Last  month  800  men  from  the 
fleet  had  leave  on  shore  for  a  day,  but  there  were  no  cases 
whatever  of  drunkenness,  disorder,  or  immorality.  The 
men,  instead  of  drinking  freely  of  beer  and  other  intoxicants, 
which  they  could  have  obtained  at  the  saloon  that  was 
open  to  all,  preferred  to  spend  their  leave  money  on  sugar, 
and  appeared  to  enjoy  themselves  immensely.  From  the 
time  of  the  first  landing  until  the  present,  the  conduct  of  the 
men  has  been  exemplary,  and  I  do  not  think  could  be  sur- 
passed by  the  troops  of  any  other  civilized  nation." 

The  Japanese  soldier  needs  no  such  elaborate  commis- 
sariat as  the  British  and  American  soldier.  He  can  live 
contentedly  on  a  daily  ration  of  a  few  cents'  worth  of  rice 
mixed  with  whole  wheat  or  barley,  occasionally  supple- 
mented by  a  little  meat  or  fish.  And  yet  his  endurance  is  as 
remarkable  as  his  loyalty  and  bravery.  In  north  China, 
during  the  Boxer  Uprising  in  1900,  he  came  into  competi- 
tion with  the  soldiers  of  the  great  nations  of  the  West,  and 
it  was  the  well-nigh  universal  testimony  not  only  of  mis- 
sionaries and  newspaper  correspondents,  but  of  European 
and  American  army  officers,  that  "the  little  Japs  were  the 
best  soldiers  of  them  all,"  excelling  in  discipline,  in  celerity 
of  movement,  in  orderly  behavior,  in  the  perfection  of  their 
commissary  and  quartermaster  departments,  and  in  general 


262  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

efficiency  for  hard  campaigning.  When  the  Pope  sent  a 
handsome  diamond  to  Bishop  Favier  with  instructions  to 
give  it  to  the  man  who  had  performed  the  best  service  dur- 
ing the  siege  of  Peking,  the  bishop  gave  it  to  Colonel  Shiba, 
military  attache*  of  the  Japanese  legation. 

Japan's  navy,  too,  is  one  of  the  best  in  the  world.  Her 
ships  are  thoroughly  modern  in  construction  and  equipment, 
and  her  officers  and  men  know  how  to  use  their  formidable 
fighting  machines.  The  world  has  not  forgotten  that  in 
the  war  with  China  the  Japanese  captured  and  sunk  Chi- 
nese battleships  with  unarmored  cruisers.  When  the 
thermometer  is  twenty-six  degrees  below  the  freezing-point, 
and  the  decks  are  sheeted  with  ice  and  the  wind  is  blowing 
a  gale  and  the  air  is  thick  with  whirling  snow,  most  sailors 
would  discreetly  suspend  operations.  But  though  these 
were  the  conditions  before  Wei-hai-wei,  the  Japanese 
tumbled  down  the  Chinese  fortifications  as  smilingly  as 
if  on  a  summer's  holiday.  Admiral  Belknap  said :  "  I  do  not 
hesitate  to  express  the  opinion  that,  were  English  and  Japa- 
nese fleets  of  about  equal  strength  to  meet  in  battle,  the 
chances  would  be  as  favorable  to  the  Japanese  as  to  the 
English.  The  Japanese  will  fight;  let  there  be  no  mistake 
about  that.  The  sun  does  not  shine  on  a  more  determined 
or  more  intrepid  race  than  that  of  Japan." 

The  Japanese  soldier  never  counts  the  cost  to  himself  of 
any  order  that  he  may  receive,  and  rather  hopes  that  he 
may  have  the  honor  of  being  killed  for  the  Emperor,  whom 
he  loves  and  worships.  Japanese  soldiers  and  sailors  are 
characterized  by  a  self-sacrificing  dash  and  determination 
which  make  them  well-nigh  invincible.  At  the  outbreak 
of  the  war  with  Russia,  some  Japanese  in  their  eagerness  to 
go  to  the  front  divorced  their  wives  or  sent  them  back  to 
their  parents.  The  Reverend  Doctor  Henry  Loomis,  of 
Yokohama,  says  that  one  man,  finding  himself  unable  to 
make  arrangements  for  the  care  of  his  two  little  children, 
killed  them  in  order  to  free  himself  for  military  service. 
Another  sold  his  two  daughters  to  a  brothel-keeper.  Ad- 
miral Togo  told  his  officers  to  sail  with  the  expectation  that 


JAPAN  AS  A  MILITARY  POWER  263 

they  would  not  see  their  wives  and  children  again,  and  not 
even  to  think  about  them  or  write  to  them.  It  is  said  that 
he  himself  once  struck  his  wife  and  ordered  her  to  be  silent 
when  she  entreated  him  not  to  rise  from  a  sick-bed  to  go 
to  his  ship.  "I  shall  count  it  an  honor  to  die  for  Japan," 
was  the  unanimous  reply  of  a  regiment  to  the  question: 
"What  do  you  plan  to  do  in  the  war  with  Russia?"  When 
Admiral  Togo  called  for  Kesshi-tai  (a  body  of  men  resolved 
to  fight  till  death)  to  sink  blocking  steamships  in  the  en- 
trance to  Port  Arthur,  2,000  men  eagerly  responded,  and 
among  the  applications  was  the  following  from  a  second- 
class  warrant  officer: 

February  18,  1904. 
COMMANDER  HIKOJIRO  IJICHI, 

H.  I.  M.  S.  Mikasa. 

Sir: — I,  being  desirous  of  participating  in  the  volunteer  corps  now 
being  raised,  entreat  you  to  select  me,  hereby  sending  in  application 
written  with  my  own  blood.  MONPEI  HAYASHI. 

When  Captain  Yashiro,  of  the  Japanese  battleship  Asama, 
bade  good-by  to  the  volunteers,  he  gave  them  to  drink  from 
a  large  silver  loving-cup  filled  with  cold  water,  as  if  he  were 
giving  them  the  wine  of  the  sacrament  (when  near  relatives 
in  Japan  part  without  any  expectation  of  ever  meeting  again, 
they  drink  by  turns  from  a  cup  of  cold  water  as  they  bid 
each  other  a  last  good-by),  and  said  to  them:  "I  send  you 
to  the  place  of  death,  and  I  have  no  doubt  that  you  are 
ready  to  die;  but  I  do  not  mean  to  advise  you  to  despise 
your  life  nor  to  run  needless  risks  in  trying  to  make  a  great 
name.  What  I  ask  of  you  all  is  to  do  your  duty  regardless 
of  your  life.  The  cup  of  water  that  I  now  offer  you  is  not 
meant  to  give  you  courage — it  would  be  shameful  if  our 
men  needed  Dutch  courage  to  go  to  the  place  of  death — 
it  is  only  to  make  you  representatives  of  the  honor  of  the 
Asama.  Submit  your  life  to  the  will  of  Heaven  and  calmly 
perform  your  duty."1 

In  April,  1910,  Lieutenant  Tsutomu  Sakuma,  of  the  ill- 
fated  submarine  No.  6,  found  that,  as  the  result  of  an 

1  Quoted  by  George  Kennan,  article  in  The  Outlook,  June  18,  1904. 


264  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

unavoidable  accident,  his  submarine  was  sinking  and  that 
death  by  suffocation  was  inevitable.  He  calmly  wrote  in 
his  log-book: 

"I  have  no  words  to  beg  pardon  for  losing  His  Majesty's  boat  and 
for  killing  my  men,  owing  to  my  carelessness.  But  all  the  crew  have 
well  discharged  their  duties  till  their  death,  and  have  worked  with 
fortitude.  .  .  .  Our  only  regret  is  that  this  accident  may,  we  fear, 
cause  a  hindrance  to  the  development  of  the  submarine.  ...  I  am 
greatly  satisfied.  I  have  always  been  prepared  for  death  on  leaving 
home.  I  humbly  ask  Your  Majesty,  the  Emperor,  to  be  so  gracious 
as  not  to  let  the  bereaved  families  of  my  men  be  subjected  to  desti- 
tution. This  is  the  only  anxiety  which  occupies  my  mind  at  present." 

Human  Bullets,  A  Soldier's  Story  of  Port  Arthur,  is  the 
title  of  a  little  book  by  Lieutenant  Tadayoshi  Sakurai,  in 
which  a  typical  Japanese  vividly  describes  the  fierce  joy  of 
battle  against  the  foes  of  his  country.  He  calls  it  a  "de- 
lightful business  to  pursue  a  flying  enemy  when  they  are 
shot  from  behind  and  fall  like  leaves  in  the  autumnal  wind." 
It  is  not  a  light  thing  for  the  world  when  modern  weapons 
of  precision  are  put  into  the  hands  of  men  of  such  warlike 
passion. 

Like  devotion  characterized  the  people  at  home.  Sev- 
eral fathers  and  mothers  committed  suicide  to  enable  their 
sons,  upon  whom  they  were  dependent,  to  go  to  the  war. 
When  neighbors  called  to  express  sympathy  with  a  man 
whose  boy  had  been  killed,  he  replied:  "I  am  not  an  ob- 
ject of  sympathy.  All  must  die,  and  my  son  might  have 
died  like  the  son  of  my  neighbor,  in  a  cabin,  of  fever.  But 
he  died  on  the  field  of  battle  in  the  service  of  his  Emperor 
and  in  the  performance  of  his  duty.  I  should  be  con- 
gratulated." 

The  war  with  Russia  brought  into  high  relief  some 
phases  of  Japan's  methods  of  preparation.  The  intelli- 
gence department  had  collected  complete  and  detailed  in- 
formation regarding  the  topography  of  the  country  to  be 
fought  over.  Every  path  and  creek,  every  hill  and  valley 
in  all  Korea  and  Manchuria  were  indicated  upon  maps 
conveniently  arranged  for  officers  in  the  field.  Plans  of 
campaign  had  been  worked  out  so  that  every  important 


JAPAN  AS  A  MILITARY  POWER  265 

battle  was  fought  on  the  prescribed  lines,  and  the  command- 
ing general  could  report  afterward  that  he  had  engaged  the 
enemy  "as  prearranged,"  a  phrase  which  occurs  with  sig- 
nificant frequency  in  official  reports.  Enormous  accumula- 
tions of  supplies  and  munitions  of  war  had  been  bought  or 
manufactured.  Arms,  ammunition,  food,  clothing,  equip- 
ment, transportation — everything  indeed  that  the  army  and 
navy  required — were  provided  and  stored  where  they  could 
be  readily  used. 

This  perfect  preparedness  enabled  the  Japanese  to  be 
prompt  in  taking  the  offensive.  They  forced  the  fighting 
from  start  to  finish.  Knowing  precisely  what  they  wanted 
to  do,  they  went  at  their  task  with  relentless  energy.  Gen- 
eral Grant's  motto,  "When  in  doubt,  go  forward,"  was  bet- 
tered by  the  Japanese  for  they  were  never  in  doubt.  The 
result  was  that  the  campaign  was  fought  on  their  lines,  and 
that  the  Russians  were  kept  so  busy  defending  themselves 
that  they  had  no  chance  to  develop  strategy  of  their  own. 
The  moral  power  of  such  bold  initiative  was  tremendous. 
The  Japanese  troops  were  always  eager  and  confident, 
while  the  Russians  were  kept  in  constant  apprehension  of 
attack,  an  apprehension  which  was  saved  from  frequent 
panic  only  by  the  dogged  obstinacy  of  the  Slavic  tempera- 
ment. 

Fifth:  Maximum  strength  at  the  front  was  another  ele- 
ment in  Japanese  success.  The  Russian  general  Kuropat- 
kin  lamented  that  "at  the  end  of  March,  1905,  when  we 
had  carried  out  a  very  energetic  preparation  of  the  theatre 
of  warlike  action  as  far  as  the  River  Sungari,  the  fighting 
element  in  the  Manchurian  army  consisted  only  of  58  per 
cent  in  some  sections  of  the  troops.  ...  In  April,  the  per- 
centage of  bayonets  in  the  First  Manchurian  Army  consti- 
tuted 51.9  per  cent."  But  the  Japanese  succeeded  in  keep- 
ing their  sick  and  special-detail  lists  so  small  and  the 
health  of  their  troops  so  good  that  they  usually  had  more 
than  90  per  cent  of  their  men  in  action. 

Sixth:  Sanitation  and  prophylaxis  must  not  be  over- 
looked in  studying  the  causes  of  Japanese  success.  Disease 
is  often  a  greater  danger  to  an  army  than  the  living  enemy. 


266  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

The  history  of  former  wars  shows  that  an  average  of  four 
men  have  died  from  disease  for  every  one  killed  in  action. 
In  six  months  of  the  Crimean  campaign,  the  losses  of  the 
allied  forces  from  this  cause  were  50,000  as  against  20,000 
from  battle  casualties.  In  the  Russo-Turkish  War  of 
1877-8,  the  deaths  from  disease  (80,000)  were  four  times 
as  many  as  those  which  occurred  in  battle  or  from  wounds. 
In  our  own  war  with  Mexico,  the  proportion  of  deaths  from 
disease  to  those  from  battle  casualties  was  three  to  one. 
In  the  American  Civil  War  the  Northern  armies  lost  110,000 
men  by  shells  and  bullets  and  199,720  by  disease,  or  8.6 
per  cent  of  the  number  of  men  in  the  army.  During  the 
French  campaign  of  1894  in  Madagascar,  about  14,000  sol- 
diers were  sent  to  the  front.  Only  29  were  killed  in  action, 
but  over  7,000  perished  from  preventable  disease.  In  the 
Boer  War  in  South  Africa,  the  British  losses  from  disease, 
compared  with  those  from  wounds,  were  ten  to  one.  In  our 
own  war  with  Spain  14  lives  were  sacrificed  to  ignorance 
and  carelessness  for  every  soldier  who  died  on  the  firing- 
line  or  from  wounds.  The  actual  figures  were  293  deaths 
from  battle  casualties  and  3,681  from  disease.1  President 
Taft  declared  that  there  were  20,000  cases  of  typhoid  fever 
among  120,000  troops,  and  that  90  per  cent  of  the  volunteer 
regiments  were  infected  within  eight  weeks  from  the  date 
of  mobilization.  Among  10,759  men  encamped  at  Jackson- 
ville, Florida,  for  four  months  in  1898,  there  were  2,693 
cases  of  fever,  and  529  deaths;  an  annual  death-rate  of 
147.5  per  1,000  for  soldiers  at  whom  not  a  shot  was  fired.2 
Colonel  Theodore  Roosevelt  declared  that  the  whole  Ameri- 
can force  at  Santiago  was  an  army  of  invalids.  Shakespeare 
caused  Henry  V  to  .voice  the  experience  of  many  military 
commanders  when,  after  a  short  campaign  in  France,  the 
King  lamented : 

"My  people  are  with  sickness  much  enfeebled; 

My  army  but  a  weak  and  sickly  guard." 

1  Cf.  Doctor  L.  L.  Seaman,  The  Real  Triumph  of  Japan. 

*  Major  Robert  E.  Noble,  quoted  in  the  New  York  Times,  May  27, 1917. 


JAPAN  AS  A  MILITARY  POWER  267 

Until  recent  years,  many  officers  of  European  and  Ameri- 
can armies  were  almost  contemptuously  indifferent  to  the 
health  of  their  men.  Army  surgeons  were  free  to  advise, 
but  had  little  or  no  authority  to  enforce  sanitary  measures. 
Their  duty  was  believed  to  be  to  take  care  of  men  after  they 
became  ill,  not  to  prevent  them  from  becoming  ill.  There 
were  regulations  regarding  camp  locations,  latrines,  sick- 
calls  and  field-hospitals;  but  the  average  commander  ap- 
parently deemed  the  prevention  of  disease  unworthy  of  the 
soldier  spirit.  When  I  was  in  Manila  in  1901,  I  saw  a  regi- 
ment encamped  in  a  veritable  lake  of  mud,  and  many  of  the 
men  sick  in  consequence.  I  was  credibly  informed  that  a 
request  for  permission  to  remove  the  camp  to  an  available 
drier  site  was  sharply  refused  on  the  ground  that  soldiers 
must  get  used  to  such  things !  An  artillery  officer  who  was 
prominent  in  the  Santiago  campaign  boasted  that  he  did 
not  drink  boiled  water  in  Cuba,  or  carry  out  any  other 
"  ridiculous  sanitary  recommendations."  He  died  of  typhoid 
in  the  Philippines  six  months  later.  A  lieutenant  of  in- 
fantry refused  to  be  vaccinated,  and  smallpox  caused  his 
funeral  a  month  after  reaching  the  Philippines.  Both  of 
these  officers  were  regarded  by  their  countrymen  as  heroes 
who  had  died  for  the  flag.1 

Japan  was  the  first  nation  to  remedy  these  abuses  and 
to  deal  intelligently  with  questions  of  military  health  and 
sanitation.  It  is  only  fair  to  bear  in  mind  that  the  real 
causes  of  many  maladies  and  of  the  methods  of  propaga- 
tion were  not  known  until  a  short  time  ago.  The  germ 
theory  of  disease,  the  relation  of  mosquitoes  to  malaria, 
flies  and  water  to  typhoid,  body-lice  to  typhus,  dirt  to  sup- 
puration, and  the  use  of  anti-septics,  anti-toxins,  and  other 
preventives  are  comparatively  recent  discoveries.  The 
average  civilian  slept  in  an  unventilated  room  under  the 
blissful  impression  that  "night  air  is  injurious,"  and  ate  and 
drank  what  he  pleased  in  calm  neglect  of  every  health  pre- 
caution. Even  the  medical  profession  prescribed  drugs  for 

1  Article  by  Major  Charles  E.  Woodruff,  of  the  Medical  Corps,  U.  S.  A.,  in 
the  New  York  Times,  October  18,  1908. 


268  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

diphtheria  while  drain-pipes  were  out  of  order,  and  ordered 
a  milk  diet  for  a  fever  patient  without  reference  to  the 
character  of  the  milk-supply.  The  last  two  decades  have 
seen  a  remarkable  increase  in  knowledge  regarding  these 
subjects.  Japan  and  Russia  were  the  first  nations  to  wage 
a  great  war  after  the  civilized  world  had  begun  to  realize 
the  significance  of  these  things.  But  Russia  certainly  did 
not  show,  and  it  is  doubtful  whether  any  other  white  nation 
would  have  shown,  the  intelligent  and  resolute  determina- 
tion with  which  the  Japanese  handled  this  problem. 

This  care  is  not  to  be  attributed  to  a  greater  regard  for 
the  welfare  of  the  individual  soldier  as  a  man  than  has 
been  manifested  by  other  governments.  No  other  generals 
hi  the  world  more  freely  sacrificed  their  men  in  battle. 
They  were  wise  enough,  however,  to  realize  that  sick  men 
cannot  fight  effectively,  that  an  invalid  soldier  is  a  double 
loss,  for  he  needs  a  well  man  to  take  care  of  him,  and  that 
men  in  prime  condition  make  a  more  formidable  army  than 
men  weakened  by  disease. 

The  Japanese  went  about  this  work  in  the  thorough  and 
methodical  manner  which  characterized  all  their  prepara- 
tion and  conduct  of  the  war.  Surgeons  were  not  regarded 
as  mere  civilians  in  uniform  who  were  accorded  rank  by 
courtesy;  they  were  authoritative  officers  who  not  only 
cared  for  the  sick  and  wounded,  but  who  had  power  and 
discretion  in  sanitary  matters.  A  commanding  officer  who 
ignored  a  recommendation  of  an  army  surgeon  which  dealt 
with  the  preservation  of  the  health  of  his  troops  would  have 
found  himself  in  trouble  in  short  order.  The  aphorism  of 
Napoleon,  that  "an  army  fights  on  its  stomach"  was  fully 
understood  by  the  Japanese.  Careful  attention  was  given 
to  camp  hygiene,  and  the  troops  were  told  how  to  prepare 
and  serve  their  food,  what  kinds  must  be  avoided,  how  food 
should  be  chewed,  and  how  the  bowels  should  be  kept  in 
proper  order. 

Drinking-water  received  special  attention.  The  medical 
department  of  the  army  sent  experts  in  advance  of  march- 
ing troops  to  test  the  water  in  wells  and  streams.  If  one 


JAPAN  AS  A  MILITARY  POWER  269 

was  found  impure,  a  notice  was  posted  forbidding  the  use 
of  the  water  without  boiling.  Every  company  had  an  ap- 
paratus for  boiling  water,  and  a  soldier  was  not  permitted 
to  take  a  drink  of  any  water  which  had  not  been  pronounced 
fit  for  use  either  by  testing  or  boiling. 

Before  going  into  battle,  every  soldier  was  given  a  first- 
aid-to-the-injured  packet,  and  taught  how  to  use  it.  He 
was  required  to  take  a  bath,  put  on  clean  underclothing, 
and  pare  and  clean  his  finger-nails,  so  that  if  a  bullet 
entered  his  body  it  would  not  carry  in  shreds  of  dirty  cloth- 
ing or  impurities  from  the  skin  or  hands.  One  can  imagine 
the  laughter  with  which  American  troops  would  have 
greeted  such  orders,  and  the  difficulty  of  enforcing  them. 
But  the  feudal  spirit,  the  unquestioning  obedience,  and  the 
iron  discipline  of  the  Japanese  were  equal  to  every  demand. 

The  results  of  this  policy  amazed  the  world.  The  Japa- 
nese generals  commanded  men  in  "the  pink  of  condition." 
As  the  steel- jacketed  bullets  usually  bored  clean  holes 
which  were  not  infected  by  dirty  bodies  or  soiled  clothing, 
and  as  the  soldier  promptly  clapped  an  antiseptic  bandage 
over  the  wound,  a  very  large  percentage  of  the  injuries  re- 
ceived in  battle  quickly  healed  by  first  intention,  many  of 
them  requiring  no  other  treatment.  Sickness  was  so  effec- 
tually held  in  check  that,  while  58,887  men  were  killed  in 
battle  or  died  from  wounds,  there  were  only  27,158  deaths 
from  disease  among  the  1,200,000  men  who  went  to  the 
front. 

Equal  care  was  exercised  in  the  navy.  Food  and  sanita- 
tion are  more  easily  watched  on  warships  than  on  land,  so 
that  illness  is  less  common  among  sailors  than  among  sol- 
diers. Wounded  men,  too,  can  be  more  quickly  cared  for 
on  shipboard  than  when  they  are  scattered  over  miles  of 
ground,  where  they  may  have  to  lie  for  hours,  and  perhaps 
days,  before  they  can  be  reached.  Naval  commanders  or- 
der men  to  plug  their  ears  with  cotton  before  a  battle  so 
that  the  concussion  of  heavy  cannon  will  not  rupture  ear- 
drums. The  Japanese  surgeons  took  this  precaution, 
carefully  examined  the  eyes  of  gunners  to  make  sure  that 


270  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

there  was  no  impairment  of  vision  which  might  affect  their 
aim,  and  during  engagements  supplied  the  battery  crews 
with  a  weak  solution  of  boracic  acid  to  wash  out  the  eyes 
when  they  became  affected  by  smoke  and  dust.  Food  and 
clothing  for  both  soldiers  and  sailors  were  adapted  to  the 
climate  and  season,  so  that  Japanese  troops  were  not  com- 
pelled in  midsummer  to  swelter  hi  the  heavy  flannel  shirts 
and  to  eat  the  heating  foods  of  Wisconsin  lumber-jacks  in 
winter,  as  American  soldiers  were  in  the  war  with  Spain. 

Some  critics  assert  that  the  Japanese  have  been  over- 
praised for  their  health  record.  It  is  alleged  that  they  were 
as  secretive  about  their  sick  returns  as  they  were  about 
everything  else,  and  that  there  were  more  sick  soldiers 
than  they  cared  to  have  the  world  know.  The  Asiatic 
scourge  of  beri-beri  was  often  prevalent.1  We  must  re- 
member, too,  in  connection  with  the  fact  that  the  number 
of  deaths  from  disease  was  less  than  that  from  bullets,  that 
the  Japanese  sacrificed  their  lives  in  battle  as  white  soldiers 
seldom  do.  An  American  general  who  ordered  repeated 
charges  which  resulted  in  the  annihilation  of  the  columns 
making  them  would  be  universally  execrated.  General 
Grant  was  denounced  as  "a  butcher"  because  he  directed 
single  assaults  which  caused  the  death  of  less  than  half  of 
the  attacking  force.  But  when  Japanese  regiments  were 
completely  annihilated  at  Port  Arthur,  fresh  regiments  were 
ordered  up,  to  be  wiped  out  in  turn,  and  then  still  other  regi- 
ments, until  the  hill  slopes  were  turned  into  shambles. 
This  kind  of  warfare  of  course  swelled  the  proportion  of 
killed  and  wounded  as  compared  with  the  sick.  But  making 
all  due  allowance  for  these  considerations,  the  general  fact 
remains  that,  in  comparison  with  all  previous  wars,  the 
Japanese  were  successful  to  an  unprecedented  degree  in 
lessening  disease  and  in  treating  wounds. 

Western  governments  were  not  slow  in  learning  the  les- 
son. Their  war  departments  now  pay  far  closer  attention 
to  the  health  of  soldiers,  and  the  medical  arm  of  the  service 

1  Cf.  F.  A.  McKenzie,  The  Unveiled  East,  p.  106,  and  B.  L.  Putnam  Weale, 
The  Coming  Struggle  in  Eastern  Asia,  p.  204. 


JAPAN  AS  A  MILITARY  POWER  271 

has  a  higher  relative  standing  than  it  had  before  the  Russia- 
Japan  War.  The  European  War,  a  decade  later,  bore 
striking  witness  to  this  improvement.  It  is  true  that 
typhus  raged  among  the  Serbian  troops,  that  the  Russians 
were  characteristically  heedless  in  matters  of  sanitation, 
and  that  the  British  and  French  expedition  to  Gallipoli  lost 
nearly  a  hundred  thousand  men  on  account  of  disease. 
But  the  health  record  on  the  western  front  was  remarkably 
good.  Soldiers  on  both  sides  were  well  fed  and  well  clothed. 
Epidemics  were  stopped.  Wounds  were  so  skilfully  treated 
that  more  than  80  per  cent  of  the  wounded  men  recovered 
sufficiently  to  enable  them  to  return  to  the  battle-line  within 
three  or  four  weeks.  Of  the  first  half-million  men  that 
Canada  sent  to  Europe,  "the  deaths  from  sickness  were 
less  than  5.3  per  cent  of  all  the  deaths,  and  less  than  \y^ 
per  cent  of  all  the  casualties.  .  .  .  Only  one  out  of  every 
411  soldiers  succumbed  to  sickness  in  the  course  of  nearly 
three  years  of  camp  and  trench  life  combined." 

The  English  and  Australian  showing  would  probably  be 
about  equally  satisfactory.  The  French  record  was  sadly 
lowered  by  tuberculosis.  Doctor  Herman  M.  Biggs,  of 
New  York,  said  that  150,000  French  soldiers  had  to  be 
withdrawn  from  the  army  on  this  account  alone.  This 
lamentable  fact  should  not  be  attributed  to  French  dis- 
regard of  reasonable  precautions  but  to  the  fact  that  the 
frightful  and  long-continued  fighting  compelled  France  in 
her  desperation  to  send  to  the  front  many  men  who  were 
not  physically  able  to  withstand  the  strain  of  life  in  the 
trenches.  Taking  the  European  War  as  a  whole,  careful 
sanitation,  preventive  medicine  and  antiseptic  treatment  of 
wounds  so  lowered  the  mortality  rate  that  the  proportion 
of  men  killed  or  permanently  disabled  by  wounds  or  disease 
was  probably  not  as  high  as  in  some  former  wars.  One 
third  of  all  the  men  who  went  into  the  battle  of  Gettysburg 
were  left  on  the  field.  General  Grant  began  a  campaign  in 
Virginia  with  150,000  men,  and  from  these  and  the  re- 
inforcements which  joined  them  he  lost  200,000  in  three 
months  from  sickness  and  fighting.  Major-General  William 


272  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

C.  Gorgas,  Surgeon-General  of  the  United  States  Army, 
who  cites  these  facts,  says  that  there  has  been  no  such  pro- 
portionate loss  as  that  in  any  of  the  big  battles  of  the 
recent  war.  The  actual  number  is,  of  course,  far  greater 
than  in  previous  wars;  but  this  is  due  to  the  unprecedented 
number  of  combatants  engaged  and  not  to  higher  proportion. 
The  death-rate  from  disease  in  the  American  army  in  France 
was  declared  by  General  Peyton  C.  March,  to  have  been 
less  than  three-fourths  of  one  per  cent,  which  is  believed  to 
be  the  lowest  that  any  army  has  ever  reported. 

I  am  digressing  from  the  Japanese;  but  perhaps  I  have 
said  enough  in  this  chapter  to  show  that  Japan  is  now  a 
military  Power  of  the  first  class,  and  that  she  is  quite  able 
to  maintain  her  position.  Marquis  Okuma  voiced  the 
united  opinion  of  the  Japanese  people  when  he  concluded 
an  address  in  March,  1915,  by  saying:  "Japan  is  becoming 
a  great  country.  We  must  have  an  army  adequate  to  de- 
fend our  country.  The  European  War  proved  that  a  regu- 
larly trained  army  is  necessary  in  defending  a  country.  The 
one-year  service  system  advocated  may  do  for  small  coun- 
tries, like  Switzerland  for  instance,  but  it  will  not  do  for 
Japan.  We  should  consider  our  position  in  the  world." 
The  Japan  Advertiser  said  that  the  banzais  of  the  five  thou- 
sand people  who  heard  him  "nearly  lifted  the  Kabukiza 
Theatre." 


CHAPTER  XVII 
JAPAN'S  COMMERCIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

MY  two  visits  to  Japan,  eight  years  apart,  gave  me  an 
opportunity  to  note  the  altering  conditions.  Visibly  indeed 
there  was  comparatively  little  change.  The  charm  of  Japa- 
nese scenery  was  still  unmarred,  save  in  a  few  places,  by 
the  crass  materialism  which  in  America  lines  our  railways 
with  huge  signs  vouchsafing  the  opinion  that  we  ought  to 
use  bile  beans,  that  soothing  syrup  is  good  for  babies,  and 
that  pink  pills  will  redden  pale  faces.  Japanese  architec- 
ture was  the  same,  save  that  here  and  there  a  new  public 
building  was  of  foreign  style.  Native  garments  still  pre- 
dominated on  the  streets.  The  jinrikisha  still  awaited  the 
traveller  at  every  station,  and  there  were  the  same  long 
rows  of  narrow  shops  with  their  picturesque  signs.  The 
visitor  could  easily  find  external  signs  of  change  if  he  looked 
for  them,  and  in  some  instances  they  obtruded  themselves. 
Nevertheless,  Japan  to  the  eye  was  the  familiar  historic 
Japan. 

But  as  I  moved  among  the  people  I  became  conscious  of 
subtler  changes.  In  1901  I  found  the  militant  spirit  domi- 
nant. The  people  had  not  recovered  from  their  rage  and 
chagrin  over  Russia's  seizure  of  Port  Arthur  and  Man- 
churia, thus  depriving  them  of  the  hard-won  fruits  of  the 
China-Japan  War.  The  nation  was  thinking  of  revenge. 
It  realized,  too,  that  Russian  aggressions  must  result  in 
war.  It  was  therefore  drilling  soldiers,  building  warships, 
and  accumulating  military  stores. 

Present-day  Japan,  while  not  less  military,  is  more  com- 
mercial. It  understands  that  war  is  expensive  business. 
The  China-Japan  War  ran  up  the  national  budget  from 
$41,500,000  annually  to  $84,000,000,  and  the  Russia-Japan 

273 


274  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

War  swelled  it  to  $252,500,000.  The  latter  war  cost  Japan 
$585,000,000,  and  at  its  close  the  nation  was  staggering 
under  a  debt  of  $1,125,153,411.  This  does  not  look  large 
in  comparison  with  the  enormous  debts  incurred  by  Western 
nations  in  the  European  War  a  decade  later,  but  it  was 
$23  per  capita,  which  was  ten  times  the  per-capita  debt  of 
1893. 

Almost  everything  is  taxed.  Official  reports  list  among 
other  sources  of  revenue  taxes  on  land,  incomes,  business, 
succession,  travelling,  mining,  bank-notes,  liquors,  soy, 
sugar,  textile  fabrics,  kerosene-oil,  bourses,  imports,  ton- 
nage, stamps,  and  "other  taxes,"  while  postal,  telegraph, 
telephone,  and  railway  services,  forests,  salt,  camphor,  and 
tobacco  are  classed  as  "public  undertakings  and  state  prop- 
erty," whose  profits  accrue  to  the  state  treasury.  In  addi- 
tion to  an  import  duty  of  15  per  cent  on  manufactured 
articles,  native  manufacturers  are  heavily  assessed,  and  ev- 
ery citizen  with  an  annual  income  of  more  than  $150  pays 
income  tax.  The  Japanese  have  to  pay  from  20  to  30  per 
cent  of  their  incomes  for  taxes.  A  Tokyo  paper  (the 
Kokumin  Shimfuri)  declares  that  "the  heavy  debts  of  Japan 
are  more  than  the  nation  can  endure";  and  Baron  Shibu- 
sawa,  one  of  the  ablest  financiers  in  Japan,  admitted  re- 
cently that  "the  present  rate  of  taxation  in  Japan  is  indeed 
extremely  high  and  more  than  the  people  at  large  can 
bear." 

Japan  realizes  that  its  material  resources  are  greatly 
inferior  to  those  of  other  first-class  Powers,  and  that  the 
position  and  ambitions  of  the  nation  require  wealth  as  well 
as  an  army  and  navy.  The  Japanese  cannot  get  this  wealth 
by  agriculture;  for  not  only  is  Japan  a  comparatively  small 
country  territorially,  but  only  13  per  cent  of  its  area  is 
easily  susceptible  of  cultivation,  and  15  per  cent  is  about 
the  practicable  limit.  The  valleys  are  rich,  but  they  are 
not  extensive,  and  there  are  no  vast  stretches  of  rich  prairie 
soil  like  those  in  Manchuria  and  the  western  part  of  the 
United  States.  The  pressure  of  population  in  Japan  has 


JAPAN'S  COMMERCIAL  DEVELOPMENT          275 

already  been  noted.  The  Empire  had  37,017,362  inhabi- 
tants in  1883;  39,607,254  in  1888;  41,388,313  in  1893; 
43,763,855  in  1898;  46,732,807  in  1903;  48,649,583  in 
1906;  and  it  now  has  56,860,735  exclusive  of  Korea,  For- 
mosa, and  Saghalien.  The  cost  of  living  is  rising.  The 
limit  of  soil  productiveness  has  been  practically  reached 
and  Japan  has  to  import  food  for  her  people.  Every  year 
she  purchases  abroad  millions  of  piculs  of  rice  and  beans, 
the  former  chiefly  from  China,  Siam,  and  Burma  and  the 
latter  largely  from  Manchuria.  Her  imports  of  flour  in  a 
recent  year  were  $1,819,166.  There  are  already  350  people 
to  the  square  mile  and  the  birth-rate  is  rising. 

The  Japanese  have  therefore  entered  upon  a  period  of 
commercial  and  industrial  development.  They  have  studied 
to  good  effect  the  example  of  England  and  they  are  foster- 
ing trade  and  manufactures  on  a  large  scale.  They  were 
already  proficient  in  making  artistic  goods.  Their  lacquer- 
work,  cloisonne",  and  porcelain  are  justly  famous,  while  their 
silks  and  embroideries  call  forth  ejaculations  of  delight  from 
every  visitor. 

The  finest  pieces  of  decorated  ware  and  embroidery  are 
not  made  in  factories,  but  in  the  homes  of  the  people  or  in 
obscure  little  shops.  Nothing  could  be  more  unostentatious 
than  the  process  of  porcelain  manufacture  that  we  saw  in 
Nagoya.  A  half-dozen  common-looking  Japanese,  some 
of  them  mere  boys  and  girls,  sat  in  a  rude  shed,  shaping 
dishes  and  vases  out  of  the  moist  clay  and  pressing  and 
cutting  them  into  form  with  the  simplest  tools  and  yet 
with  rare  skill.  The  decorating  was  done  in  hundreds  of 
lowly  homes,  and  the  firing  in  rough  kilns  tended  by  men 
who  looked  like  day-laborers.  But  the  results  were  so  deli- 
cately beautiful  that  one  felt  like  spending  days  hi  admir- 
ing them.  People  in  other  lands  prize  so  highly  what 
Nagoya  produces  that  they  annually  buy  nearly  a  million 
yen'  worth  of  her  pottery,  cloisonn6,  lacquer,  and  other  art 
objects.  >;.;;r.  •'. 

The  curio-shops  and  silk-stores  in  all  the  principal  cities 


276  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

are  well  worth  visiting,  though  the  prudent  man  will  limit 
the  sum  of  money  that  he  takes  with  him.  In  Kyoto,  for 
example,  where  the  silk  industry  centres,  one  is  taken  to  a 
modest  building  only  one  and  a  half  stories  in  height  and 
with  no  pretensions  to  elegance — a  place  as  far  removed  as 
possible  from  the  gorgeous  department  stores  of  America. 
The  politest  imaginable  salesman  meets  you  at  the  door 
with  low  bows,  and  escorts  you  through  a  littered  outer 
room  and  passageway  into  a  back  room,  where  he  unfolds 
before  you  silks  and  embroideries  that  fairly  take  your 
breath  away.  The  prices,  too,  are  seductively  low,  if  you 
forget  the  heavy  duty  which  Uncle  Sam  will  remorselessly 
exact  on  your  return  to  America. 

It  is  not  surprising  that  the  art  products  of  Japan  have 
made  their  way  all  over  the  civilized  world.  The  demand 
for  the  export  trade  is  large  and  increasing,  and  stores  for 
Japanese  articles  are  now  to  be  found  in  most  of  the  lead- 
ing cities  of  Europe  and  America.  Unfortunately,  the 
cruder  taste  of  many  people  in  other  lands  calls  for  a  larger 
and  gaudier  kind  of  ware  than  the  Japanese  would  make 
for  themselves,  and  they  are  yielding,  to  some  extent,  to 
the  demand,  while  the  growth  of  the  trade  is  begetting  a 
haste  to  meet  it  which  often  shortens  the  time  spent  on  the 
decorated  ware.  In  some  articles,  therefore,  particularly 
in  lacquer,  "the  oljl  is  better."  Japan  exports  annually 
about  a  million  dollars'  worth  of  lacquered  ware,  and  two 
million  dollars'  worth  of  porcelain  and  earthenware,  with 
every  prospect  of  an  unlimited  increase. 

The  imitative  temperament  of  the  Japanese  was  a  valu- 
able asset  in  getting  a  start  in  manufacturing  staple  goods 
and  articles.  As  soon  as  they  realized  the  necessity  for 
developing  manufactures,  they  sensibly  decided  to  avail 
themselves  of  the  inventions  and  processes  which  Western 
peoples  had  gradually  acquired  through  many  years  of  re- 
search and  experiment.  Accordingly  European  and  Ameri- 
can experts  were  invited  to  Japan  to  take  charge  of  the 
new  establishments.  A  Board  of  Public  Works  was  con- 
stituted to  secure  the  needed  assistance  in  men  and  appa- 


JAPAN'S  COMMERCIAL  DEVELOPMENT          277 

ratus.  An  amusing  but  characteristic  story  is  told  of  the 
following  order  that  was  sent  to  the  board's  agent  in  London: 

"Urgent.    Send  to  Tokyo  at  once  as  follows: 
1  Professor  of  Electrical  Science. 

1  Do.  Mining. 

2  Blast  Furnaces." 

Attracted  by  the  high  salaries  offered,  many  experts  gladly 
accepted  the  invitations.  The  Japanese  carefully  watched 
their  work  so  as  to  understand  how  it  was  done,  let  them 
educate  the  people  to  use  the  new  appliances  and  then, 
when  the  market  had  been  created  and  the  foreigners  fondly 
imagined  that  they  were  about  to  reap  the  harvest  of  their 
toil  and  expenditure,  the  Japanese  politely  dismissed  them, 
did  the  work  themselves  with  their  cheap  labor,  and  so  un- 
dersold the  alien  companies  that  they  were  driven  out  of 
the  business.  Hence  there  was  woe  among  the  foreign 
merchants  of  Yokohama,  Kobe,  and  Nagasaki. 

In  the  oil  trade,  however,  the  Japanese  ran  against  a 
force  that  was  not  so  easily  overcome.  Petroleum  was  early 
introduced  and  it  quickly  became  popular.  The  duty 
down  to  1898  was  only  five  sen  (2^  cents)  on  a  ten-gallon 
case.  But  Japan  found  that  she  had  oil-fields  of  her  own 
in  several  parts  of  the  Empire,  and  especially  in  the  province 
of  Echigo.  In  order  to  promote  their  development  and 
protect  the  producers  from  the  competition  of  the  Standard 
Oil  Company,  which  had  a  manager  in  Yokohama  and  agents 
in  several  other  cities,  the  government  in  that  year  in- 
creased the  duty  to  sixteen  sen  per  case.  As  the  Standard 
Oil  Company  continued  to  bring  in  large  quantities  of  oil, 
the  government  announced  that  on  October  1,  1901,  the 
duty  would  be  doubled,  making  it  thirty-two  sen.  This  of 
course  seriously  affected  the  import  trade.  But  those  who 
get  ahead  of  the  Standard  Oil  Company  must  rise  early. 
Undismayed,  it  proceeded  to  organize  a  local  company  un- 
der the  laws  of  Japan,  with  a  capital  of  $10,000,000.  This 
company,  nominally  Japanese  but  really  Standard  Oil,  ac- 
quired large  holdings  in  the  province  of  Echigo,  sunk  wells, 


278  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

erected  a  refinery,  laid  pipe-lines,  and  proposed  to  handle 
the  oil  output  of  Japan.  The  outcome  was  a  compromise 
to  such  mutual  advantage  as  the  circumstances  permitted. 

It  did  not  follow,  however,  that  this  plan  could  be  suc- 
cessfully adopted  by  other  foreign  corporations.  The 
Standard  Oil  Company  had  such  unlimited  capital  that  it 
could  afford  to  lose  a  few  millions  if  necessary  in  a  fight  for 
a  market.  Moreover,  oil  is  a  natural  product,  and  the 
right  to  sink  wells  for  it  can  be  bought  or  leased  without 
purchasing  the  land,  for  which  indeed  the  company  usually 
cares  nothing.  The  average  foreign  investor  had  no  money 
that  he  was  willing  to  lose,  and,  besides,  before  he  invested 
he  usually  insisted  upon  control.  But  foreign  control  was 
precisely  what  the  Japanese  would  not  grant.  Their  pride 
of  independence  is  a  national  passion.  They  want  the 
foreigner's  ideas  and  inventions,  but  they  will  not  brook 
his  leadership.  Foreigners  can  own  land  only  in  a  very 
few  places  and  under  such  restrictions  as  to  make  purchase 
almost  prohibitive.  Nearly  all  foreign  properties  are  held 
under  lease  or  in  the  name  of  Japanese.  Missionary  work- 
ers feel  under  a  constraint  of  conscience  to  give  Christian 
teaching  to  Japan  at  any  sacrifice;  but  business  men  do 
not  deem  it  a  duty  to  invest  their  money  apart  from  the 
expectation  of  returns  in  hard  cash.  Japan  therefore  found 
great  difficulty  in  securing  the  capital  that  she  needed  to 
develop  her  resources  and  finance  her  enterprises. 

One  cannot  but  admire  the  courage  with  which  the  Japa- 
nese spent  money  on  plants  and  equipment.  They  per- 
ceived that  if  they  were  to  succeed  against  foreign  competi- 
tion they  must  not  begin  on  a  small  scale  and  wait  for  busi- 
ness to  grow.  Their  competitors  had  the  benefit  of  long 
experimenting  and  accumulated  capital,  and  the  Japanese 
must  risk  everything  on  a  bold  plunge.  This  required 
nerve,  for  they  had  little  money  and  their  resources  were 
largely  undeveloped.  But  they  dared  to  go  ahead.  By 
using  what  they  had,  by  heavily  taxing  themselves,  and  by 
borrowing  what  they  could,  they  proceeded  to  invest  huge 
sums  in  mills,  factories,  railways,  steamships,  telegraph- 


JAPAN'S  COMMERCIAL  DEVELOPMENT          279 
• 

lines,  post-offices,  docking  and  terminal  facilities.  Deter- 
mined to  make  equal  advance  in  other  lines,  enormous 
amounts  were  also  expended  on  streets,  roads,  sanitation, 
the  army,  navy,  and  public  buildings. 

For  years,  this  meant  hard  times  in  Japan.  Everything 
was  outgo,  and  of  course  income  was  not  immediate.  The 
gold  in  some  of  her  banks  went  to  a  perilously  low  level. 
Convertible  notes  multiplied.  The  demand  for  foreign 
goods  increased,  for  Japan  wanted  many  things  in  machin- 
ery, apparatus,  and  supplies  that  Europe  and  America  had 
to  sell.  As  there  was  at  first  little  to  sell  in  exchange,  im- 
ports were  heavily  in  excess  of  exports  and  gold  was  drained 
out  of  the  country  to  meet  the  unfavorable  balance  of 
trade. 

But  the  plucky  people  persistently  continued  their  policy, 
and  gradually  the  tide  began  to  turn.  To-day,  Japan  has 
great  machine-shops,  mills,  foundries,  shipyards,  and  manu- 
facturing establishments  of  all  kinds,  equipped  with  the 
best  modern  machinery.  More  than  200  shipbuilding  yards 
turn  out  hundreds  of  vessels  yearly,  three  of  them — the 
Mitsu-Bishi  Dockyard  and  Engine  Works  of  Nagasaki ;  the 
Kawasaki  Docking  Company,  Ltd.,  of  Kobe;  and  the  Uraga 
Dock  Company  of  Tokyo  Bay — being  among  the  largest 
and  best-equipped  in  the  world.  The  latest  Japan  Year- 
Book  shows  that  since  1914  private  yards  for  the  construc- 
tion of  steamships  of  more  than  1,000  gross  tons  have  in- 
creased their  capacity  two  and  one-half  times.  In  a  recent 
year  200,453  gross  tons  of  merchant  shipping  were  launched. 
The  number  of  factories  increased  from  125  in  1883  to 
20,000  in  1917. 

The  Japanese  not  only  supply  their  own  needs,  but  they 
have  entered  into  vigorous  competition  with  England, 
Germany,  and  the  United  States  for  the  commerce  of  the 
world.  They  are  making  bicycles,  guaranteed  to  be  equal 
to  ours,  for  twelve  dollars.  They  are  turning  out  matches 
at  a  price  that  is  closing  the  Asiatic  market  to  Western  fac- 
tories. They  can  deliver  sashes,  doors,  blinds,  and  wooden- 
ware  in  North  and  South  America  at  so  low  a  rate  that 


280  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

American  manufacturers  would  be  driven  out  of  business 
if  they  were  not  protected  by  a  tariff. 

Special  attention  has  been  given  to  the  manufacture  of 
cotton  yarn  and  cloth.  In  the  old  days,  the  yarn  was  spun 
by  hand  and  the  cloth  made  on  hand-looms  in  the  homes 
of  the  people.  But  in  1865,  the  progressive  Prince  Shi- 
madzu  imported  machinery  from  England  and  started  at 
Kagoshima  the  first  factory  in  Japan  to  spin  and  weave 
cotton  by  steam-power.  His  6,000  spindles  attracted  wide 
attention  and  within  a  few  years  other  factories  were  erected. 
By  1880,  the  business  of  cotton-manufacture  had  assumed 
considerable  proportions.  In  1897  American  manufacturers 
besought  a  committee  of  Congress  to  protect  them  against 
the  competition  of  the  Japanese,  and  a  little  later  Edward 
Atkinson  predicted  that  in  the  course  of  a  few  years  the 
Japanese  would  be  able  to  supply  the  increasing  wants  of 
the  modern  world.  Over  500,000  weavers  were  employed 
in  1895,  and  the  growth  since  then  has  been  so  rapid  that, 
in  addition  to  supplying  the  home  market,  Japan  in  a  single 
year  exported  nearly  a  hundred  million  dollars'  worth  of 
manufactured  cotton  goods. 

The  Asiatic  market  for  cotton  cloth  is  almost  unlimited. 
The  millions  of  people  in  Korea  and  Manchuria  wear  cotton 
garments  the  year  around.  Only  the  rich  wear  silk,  and 
their  number  is  relatively  small.  The  staple  garment  is 
made  of  heavy,  cheap,  cotton  sheeting,  which  is  bought 
unbleached  and  uncolored.  It  is  then  bleached  if  used  in 
Korea,  and  if  used  in  Manchuria  is  colored  by  the  native 
dyers  and  made  up  into  the  various  garments  which  the 
people  wear.  With  the  exception  of  the  wealthy  and 
official  classes,  every  man,  woman,  and  child  wears  these 
cotton  garments.  Not  a  yard  of  that  cloth  is  manufactured 
in  Korea  or  Manchuria,  nor  did  a  pound  of  cotton  grow 
there.  What  business  men  call  "the  piece-goods  trade" 
is  therefore  very  great.  The  American  Government  sent 
Special  Agent  W.  A.  Graham  Clark  to  Manchuria  in  1906 
to  inquire  into  trade  conditions,  and  in  his  report  he  said: 
"  Manchuria  is  a  very  important  market  for  American  flour, 


JAPAN'S  COMMERCIAL  DEVELOPMENT          281 

oil,  tobacco,  etc.,  and  especially  for  American  piece  goods. 
It  is  the  only  section  of  China  in  which  American  piece 
goods  practically  monopolize  the  market.  .  .  .  The  trade 
of  Manchuria  is  of  more  importance  to  the  United  States 
than  to  any  other  nation,  with  the  possible  exception  of 
Japan."  Desire  to  retain  and  enlarge  this  trade  was  one 
of  the  chief  reasons  which  led  Secretary  of  State  John  Hay 
to  urge  the  policy  of  "The  Open  Door." 

Of  course  the  Japanese  want  that  trade  themselves,  and 
they  are  getting  it.  While  they  do  not  grow  very  much 
cotton,  they  are  encouraging  its  cultivation.  Meantime, 
their  subsidized  steamers  and  government  railways  bring 
cotton  to  their  factories  and  take  the  manufactured  product 
to  the  foreign  market.  The  goods  are  sold  locally  through 
Japanese  tradesmen,  who  swarm  in  Korea  and  Manchuria, 
and  who  can  live  more  cheaply  and  are  content  with  smaller 
profits  than  white  men.  In  these  circumstances,  it  is  not 
surprising  that  the  Japanese  control  these  great  markets. 

Nor  are  Korea  and  Manchuria  their  only  objectives. 
The  garment  of  blue  cotton  sheeting  is  the  well-nigh  uni- 
versal dress  throughout  the  whole  of  China.  While  southern 
China  is  adapted  to  the  cultivation  of  cotton  and  produces 
considerable  quantities,  northern  China  does  not  grow 
enough  to  be  a  serious  factor  in  the  situation,  nor  have  the 
Chinese  yet  applied  themselves  to  modern  methods  of  cot- 
ton-manufacture on  any  considerable  scale.  The  Chinese 
market  is  therefore  one  of  enormous  possibilities  for  the 
piece-goods  trade.  Japanese  are  after  it,  and  the  German, 
Englishman,  and  American  find  them  a  competitor  not  to  be 
despised.  Substantially  the  same  statements  may  be  made 
regarding  Siam,  the  Philippines,  India,  and  Burma,  and 
the  Dutch  islands.  The  hundreds  of  millions  of  people  in 
these  countries  are  also  wearers  of  cotton  which  they  buy 
in  the  piece.  Their  soil  and  climate  are  better  adapted  to 
the  raising  of  cotton  than  the  colder  regions  of  Japan,  Korea, 
and  Manchuria.  A  good  deal  of  it  is  raised,  but  compara- 
tively little  is  manufactured.  Japan  proposes  to  do  this  for 
them,  and  she  is  to-day  shipping  her  cotton  cloth  and  yarn 


282  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

not  only  to  Korea,  Manchuria,  and  China,  but  to  Siberia, 
India,  the  Philippines,  the  Dutch  East  Indies,  the  Straits 
Settlements,  Australia,  and  the  Hawaiian  Islands. 

The  United  States  formerly  had  a  generous  share  of  the 
North  China  trade,  but  the  Japanese  developed  their  trade 
with  such  vigor  and  success  that  the  National  City  Bank 
of  New  York  announced  in  February,  1917,  that  in  the 
short  space  of  three  years  Japan  had  practically  eliminated 
the  United  States  as  an  exporter  of  cotton  cloths  to  China, 
exports  in  1916  having  fallen  to  less  than  $200,000.  In  the 
same  year  Japan  poured  in  cotton  products  to  the  value  of 
nearly  $60,000,000. 

Within  thirty  years  following  1880,  the  foreign  trade  of 
Japan  increased  1,419  per  cent,  and  it  has  been  mounting 
steadily  since  then.  Japan  buys  most  heavily  abroad  raw 
cotton  and  wool,  iron  and  steel  ingots,  bars,  rods  and  plates, 
pipes  and  fittings,  machinery,  tin  plates,  leather,  kerosene, 
paraffine,  lead,  rubber,  paper  and  paper-pulp,  and  food-sup- 
plies of  various  kinds.  She  sells  in  largest  quantities  raw 
and  manufactured  silk,  wool  and  cotton  goods,  straw  and 
hemp  braids,  porcelain,  earthenware,  and  bean-oil.  The 
difficulty  of  securing  money,  although  very  serious  for  a 
time,  has  now  passed.  The  Japan  of  to-day  has  become  so 
prosperous  that  her  national  credit  is  good  in  the  banking 
circles  of  the  world.  Her  currency,  which  a  generation  ago 
was  as  chaotic  as  China's,  is  now  on  a  gold  basis.  There 
are  1,442  ordinary  banks  and  654  savings-banks.  The 
leading  institutions,  like  the  Bank  of  Japan,  the  Yokohama 
Specie  Bank,  the  Japanese  Industrial  Bank,  and  others  that 
might  be  mentioned,  have  a  recognized  standing  not  only 
in  Asia  but  in  Europe  and  America. 

Modern  industrial  Japan  can  be  best  studied  in  Osaka, 
although  scores  of  other  places  have  also  become  important. 
The  growth  of  Osaka  has  been  prodigious.  Its  population 
in  1898  was  506,000,  but  to-day  it  is  1,387,366.  Long  be- 
fore our  train  reached  it,  we  saw  the  pall-like  smoke  of  its 
factories,  and  as  we  drew  nearer  tall  chimneys  were  in  evi- 


JAPAN'S  COMMERCIAL  DEVELOPMENT          283 

dence  on  every  side.  Articles  of  wide  variety  are  manu- 
factured here.  One  finds  wool  and  cotton  factories,  seed- 
oil  mills,  brick-yards,  cement-works,  match-factories,  and 
dozens  of  plants  of  other  kinds. 

Special  permits  were  necessary  to  visit  the  establishments 
I  wanted  to  see,  but  they  were  obtained  without  difficulty, 
and,  taking  jinrikishas  (which  by  the  way  were  more  ex- 
pensive there  than  in  any  other  city  in  Japan),  we  rode 
through  the  busy  streets,  crowded  with  shops  full  of  ma- 
chinery, hardware,  and  staple  goods  of  all  kinds,  to  a  great 
woollen-factory.  One  vast  room  contained  1,600  weaving- 
machines,  managed  by  800  women  and  girls,  each  attending 
to  two  machines.  The  racket  of  countless  shuttles  was  in 
the  air  and  innumerable  whirling  belts  confused  the  eye. 
Other  hundreds  of  men  and  women  were  employed  in  the 
winding,  dyeing,  and  printing  departments.  The  machinery 
was  of  English  and  French  make,  and  the  wool  came  from 
Australia  by  way  of  France,  where  it  was  cleaned  and  carded, 
the  factory  paying  2.15  yen  for  a  kilogram  of  wool.  The 
whole  plant  was  thoroughly  modern  in  its  appointments — 
spacious  brick  buildings,  improved  machinery,  everything 
apparently  that  science  could  suggest  and  money  procure. 
The  Japanese  owner  had  travelled  widely  in  Europe  and 
America,  and  was  reputed  to  be  an  intelligent,  progressive, 
and  well-informed  man. 

But  in  a  corner  of  the  factory  yard  I  found  a  shrine  con- 
taming  a  stone  fox  on  a  pedestal.  My  courteous  Japanese 
guide  from  the  firm's  office  informed  me,  in  answer  to  a 
question,  that  the  fox  was  the  guardian  of  the  factory,  that 
the  owner  worshipped  it,  and  that  once  a  year  a  festival 
of  the  employees  and  their  families  was  held  in  honor  of  the 
fox !  Nor  was  this  factory  an  exception.  Most  of  the  great 
factories  in  Osaka  had  similar  shrines  to  Reynard.  This 
significant  fact  is  respectfully  commended  to  those  well- 
meaning  gentlemen  in  America  who  are  fond  of  telling  us 
that  civilization  should  precede  Christianity  and  prepare 
the  way  for  it.  All  that  Japanese  manufacturer's  knowledge 


284  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

and  appropriation  of  the  most  highly  civilized  appliances 
of  the  modern  world  did  not  prevent  him  from  superstitiously 
bowing  down  to  a  stone  fox. 

Several  other  cities  illustrate  the  new  commercial  era  in 
Japan,  to  a  lesser  degree  indeed,  but  in  a  no  less  interesting 
way.  Nagoya,  for  example,  not  only  produces  the  exqui- 
site artistic  articles  of  old  Japan,  to  which  I  have  referred 
on  a  preceding  page,  but  also  such  modern  staples  as  rail- 
way-cars, textile  fabrics,  and  other  useful  articles.  The 
population  of  the  city  has  leaped  from  160,000  in  1889  to 
nearly  half  a  million,  and  its  ambitious  inhabitants  hustle 
for  it  as  energetically  as  if  they  were  Yankees. 

When  one  considers  the  neglect  of  trade  by  feudal  Japan 
until  a  few  decades  ago,  he  is  amazed  by  the  skill  and  per- 
sistence with  which  the  new  Japan  is  striving  for  mastery 
in  the  markets  of  the  world.  It  is  not  easy  for  the  white 
races  to  compete  with  them.  They  dominate  the  trade  of 
Manchuria  and  a  large  part  of  the  trade  of  central  China 
and  of  the  Pacific  Ocean.  They  are  competing  with  foreign 
and  Chinese  steamship-lines  far  up  the  Yang-tze  River, 
planting  their  colonies  in  every  port  city  of  the  Far  East, 
and  running  their  steamships  to  Europe,  the  United  States, 
India,  South  Africa,  Australia,  and  South  America. 

The  Japanese  are  skilful  in  getting  trade,  and  American 
merchants  might  well  learn  a  lesson  from  them.  They  send 
their  agents  to  the  leading  towns  of  a  country  to  make 
careful  inquiry  about  the  kind  of  goods  that  the  people 
want,  including  quality,  color,  price,  and  size  of  package. 
For  example,  the  Korean,  in  order  to  make  his  peculiar 
garment  to  advantage,  demands  white  cotton  cloth  eighteen 
inches  wide.  The  Western  exporter  is  apt  to  ignore  this, 
and  the  consequence  is  that  the  Korean  does  not  buy  his 
cloth  as  there  would  be  waste  in  cutting  it.  Japanese  firms 
do  not  attempt  to  change  the  Korean  sentiment  but  make 
the  cloth  of  the  desired  width.  Then  they  pack  the  goods 
in  packages  convenient  in  size  and  weight  for  handling  by 
porters  and  for  transportation  on  the  backs  of  ponies  and 
bullocks;  while  the  more  ignorant  or  careless  foreign  mer- 


JAPAN'S  COMMERCIAL  DEVELOPMENT          285 

chant  ships  in  cases  or  bales  so  large  and  heavy  that  they 
must  be  repacked  before  the  goods  can  be  carried  into  the 
interior.  The  Korean,  too,  wants  his  cotton  very  strong 
in  order  to  stand  the  pounding  of  Korean  laundry  methods. 
The  flimsy  stuff  that  the  foreigner  sells  quickly  goes  to  pieces 
in  washing.  The  shrewd  Japanese,  by  careful  attention 
to  these  details,  gets  the  trade  as  he  deserves  to,  while  the 
white  merchant  curses  the  alleged  stupidity  of  the  Korean 
and  "the  trickery"  of  the  Japanese. 

The  advantages  of  Japan  in  commercial  rivalry  with  other 
nations  are  numerous.  Control  of  transportation  lines  by 
land  and  sea,  government  subsidies,  and,  in  the  trade  with 
Asia,  short  haul  are  very  important  factors.  The  Japanese 
are  so  near  to  the  great  markets  of  the  mainland  that  they 
can  fill  an  order  from  almost  any  of  the  principal  cities  in 
Korea,  lower  Manchuria,  and  eastern  China  within  a  week 
or  ten  days.  Labor  is  so  cheap  in  Japan  that  the  cost  of 
production  is  much  less  than  in  Europe  and  the  United 
States,  and  prices  can  be  kept  low  consistently  with  good 
profits.  The  strain  of  longer  hours  and  the  lower  scale  of 
living  sag  efficiency  below  the  standard  of  the  American 
working  men;  but  the  supply  is  abundant  and  the  toilers 
are  driven  hard. 

The  Japanese  people,  moreover,  move  as  a  unit  in  further- 
ing their  commercial  ambitions.  Several  of  the  great  enter- 
prises of  modern  Japan  are  controlled  either  directly  or  in- 
directly by  the  government.  In  some  instances,  the  govern- 
ment owns  them  outright;  in  other  instances,  high  officials 
and  members  of  the  imperial  family  are  heavy  stockholders. 
By  the  railway-nationalization  law  and  railway-purchase 
law  of  March,  1906,  the  government  acquired  all  the  lines 
in  the  country  with  the  exception  of  a  few  of  relatively  small 
importance.  Payment  was  made  by  public  loan  bonds 
aggregating  nearly  $250,000,000.  The  street-car  lines  in 
Tokyo  are  owned  by  the  city,  and  government  ownership 
of  public  utilities  is  far  more  common  than  hi  America. 
The  nation  as  a  whole  rules  in  commercial  as  well  as  in 
government  affairs.  The  business  man  does  not  have  to 


286  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

fight  alone  for  foreign  trade,  as  the  American  tradesman 
must.  He  has  the  backing  of  the  country.  Allied  indus- 
tries support  him.  Shipping  companies  give  him  every 
possible  advantage.  He  is,  to  use  an  American  term,  a 
part  of  an  immense  "trust,"  only  the  trust  is  a  government 
instead  of  a  corporation. 

Take,  for  example,  the  periodical  excitement  in  the 
United  States  regarding  the  alleged  purpose  of  Japan  to 
secure  a  foothold  on  Magdalena  Bay,  Mexico.  A  Japa- 
nese writer  declares  that  any  effort  of  this  kind,  if  made, 
would  have  no  political  significance  but  would  be  merely 
an  instance  of  a  business  corporation  obtaining  an  ordinary 
lease  for  purely  commercial  purposes  such  as  an  American 
corporation  might  seek  in  some  Asiatic  country.  This  is 
an  excellent  technical  reply,  but  it  is  only  technical.  Ameri- 
cans have  no  such  national  solidarity  as  the  Japanese  and 
their  government  has  no  such  relation  to  their  business 
ventures.  Every  one  knows  that  when  an  American  firm 
secures  a  lease  in  Asia,  the  arrangement  has  no  political 
significance  whatever  either  present  or  prospective,  that  the 
government  of  the  United  States  does  not  work  through  the 
commercial  ventures  of  its  citizens,  and  that  beyond  giving 
half-hearted  and  perhaps  inefficient  protection  in  case  of 
attack  upon  life  or  property  the  government  will  not  con- 
cern itself  with  the  interests  of  its  citizens  abroad.  When, 
however,  a  great  Japanese  company  leases  harbor  and  shore 
rights  in  a  foreign  country,  the  lease  is  virtually  tantamount 
to  a  government  one,  and  it  may  be  controlled  as  such  at 
any  time  the  government  chooses.  While,  therefore,  it 
may  be  literally  correct  to  state  that  the  Japanese  Govern- 
ment is  not  trying  to  secure  a  base  at  Magdalena  Bay,  and 
that  only  a  commercial  company's  lease  is  contemplated, 
the  American  people  are  quite  right  in  giving  the  reported 
effort  a  political  meaning  which  would  not  attach  to  the 
effort  of  an  American  corporation  to  lease  a  harbor  hi 
Japan,  which,  by  the  way,  the  Japanese  Government  would 
never  permit. 

The  principal  steamship-lines  are  so  liberally  subsidized 


JAPAN'S  COMMERCIAL  DEVELOPMENT          287 

by  the  government  and  hire  their  seamen  at  such  low 
wages  that  they  can  carry  freight  at  rates  that  are  impos- 
sible for  American-owned  steamships  which  have  no  sub- 
sidies and  are  obliged  by  law  to  employ  a  considerable  por- 
tion of  white  men  who  demand  reasonable  wages.  The 
result  is  that  the  carrying  trade  of  the  Pacific  is  in  Japanese 
hands.  The  Merchant  Marine  League  of  San  Francisco, 
in  March,  1917,  sponsored  a  statement  by  Mr.  Louis  Getz 
to  the  effect  that  the  Nipponese  steamship  companies  are 
permitted  to  charge  foreigners  whatever  they  please  for 
moving  freight,  but  are  rigidly  held  down  to  a  small  margin 
of  profit  in  dealing  with  Japanese  shippers;  that  the  freight 
on  a  cargo  of  beans  from  San  Francisco  to  Manila  is  twenty 
dollars  a  ton  in  a  subsidized  Japanese  ship ;  but  that  if  the 
same  cargo  is  consigned  to  Kobe  or  Yokohama  the  freight 
charges  are  ten  dollars  a  ton.  A  comparison  of  the  rates 
charged  for  fifteen  kinds  of  staple  goods  revealed  that  the 
citizens  of  Japan  pay  no  higher  freight  rate  for  their  neces- 
sities now  than  before  the  war,  while  the  citizens  of  China 
and  the  Philippine  Islands  pay  rates  a  hundred  per  cent 
higher. 

I  heard  much  criticism  of  Japanese  commercial  methods. 
European  and  American  business  men  spoke  with  great 
bitterness  of  their  unfairness.  They  alleged  that  Japanese 
firms  obtain  railway  rebates;  that  transportation-lines  are 
so  managed  that  Japanese  firms  have  their  freight  promptly 
forwarded,  while  foreign  firms  are  subject  to  ruinous  delays; 
that  foreign  labels  and  trade-marks  are  placed  upon  in- 
ferior goods  so  that  it  is  difficult  to  sell  a  genuine  brand  to 
an  Asiatic  as  the  latter  believes  that  he  can  get  the  same 
brand  from  a  Japanese  at  a  lower  price.  They  also  alleged 
that  foreign  traders  in  Manchuria  are  compelled  to  pay  full 
duties  upon  all  goods,  but  that  the  Japanese,  through  their 
absolute  control  of  the  only  railway,  are  able  to  evade  the 
customs.  It  was  said  that  of  $12,000,000  worth  of  Japa- 
nese goods  which  went  into  Dairen  in  the  year  preceding  my 
visit  only  $3,000,000  worth  paid  duty.  For  a  long  time 
Japanese  goods  were  poured  into  Manchuria  at  Antung,  on 


288  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

the  Yalu  River.  Then  foreign  Powers  advised  the  Chinese 
to  place  an  inspector  of  the  imperial  Chinese  customs  at 
Antung.  The  Japanese  could  not  oppose  this,  but  they 
tried  to  have  a  Japanese  inspector  chosen.  An  American 
in  the  customs  service,  however,  was  appointed.  His  ex- 
perience in  endeavoring  to  enforce  the  laws  against  the 
Japanese,  if  it  is  ever  published,  will  make  what  Horace 
Greeley  would  have  called  "mighty  interesting  reading." 

The  rage  and  chagrin  of  European  and  American  business 
men  in  the  Far  East  can  be  imagined.  A  disgusted  foreigner 
declared  to  me  that  there  is  not  a  white  man  in  the  Far 
East,  except  those  who  are  in  the  employ  of  the  Japanese, 
who  are  friendly  to  them,  and  that  their  dominant  charac- 
teristics are  "conceit  and  deceit."  He  denied  not  only 
the  honesty  but  even  the  courage  of  the  Japanese,  insisting 
that  the  capture  of  Port  Arthur  was  not  due  to  the  bravery 
of  the  assailants  but  to  the  incompetence  of  the  defenders. 
He  said  that  the  Russian  soldiers  were  as  heroic  as  any  in 
the  world  but  that  their  officers  were  drunkards  and  de- 
bauchees; that  the  War  Department,  which  should  have 
sustained  them,  was  rotten  with  corruption;  that  at  the 
battle  of  Liao-yang  both  Russian  and  Japanese  generals 
gave  the  order  for  retreat  at  about  the  same  time,  each  feel- 
ing that  the  battle  was  lost;  but  that  the  Russian  regiments 
received  their  order  first,  and  that  as  the  Japanese  saw  them 
retreat  they  moved  forward.  He  held  that  the  anti-Japa- 
nese agitation  in  the  public  schools  of  San  Francisco  was 
secretly  fomented  and  made  an  international  incident  by 
the  Japanese  themselves,  in  order  to  divert  attention  from 
what  they  were  doing  in  Manchuria;  and  more  to  the  same 
effect. 

I  have  cited  these  opinions  as  they  are  illustrative  of 
many  that  I  heard  in  the  Far  East.  I  need  hardly  say  that 
I  regard  them  as  unjust.  Their  very  bitterness  indicates 
the  prejudice  which  gave  birth  to  some  of  them  and  added 
exaggeration  to  others.  Even  if  they  were  true,  the  Japa- 
nese would  simply  be  doing  what  it  is  notorious  that  some 
American  corporations  have  often  done.  Rebates,  adul- 


JAPAN'S  COMMERCIAL  DEVELOPMENT  289 

teration,  evasion  of  customs,  short  weight,  unfair  crushing 
of  competitors,  and  kindred  methods  are  not  so  unfamiliar 
to  Americans  that  they  can  consistently  lift  hands  of  pious 
horror  when  they  hear  of  them  in  A.sia. 

The  fact  is  that  white  traders  until  recently  had  pretty 
much  their  own  way  in  the  Far  East.  While  some  of  them 
were  men  of  high  character  and  fair  dealing,  others  cajoled 
and  bullied  and  threatened  and  bribed  the  Asiatic  to  their 
hearts'  content  and  their  pockets'  enrichment.  They  domi- 
nated the  markets,  charged  what  prices  they  pleased,  and 
reaped  enormous  profits.  When  they  got  into  trouble  with 
local  authorities  they  called  upon  their  home  governments 
to  help  them  out  of  their  scrapes.  Now  the  white  man 
finds  himself  face  to  face  with  an  Asiatic  who  can  play  the 
same  game  and  with  all  the  odds  in  his  favor.  The  Japanese 
want  those  rich  markets  for  themselves.  They  are  going 
after  them  and  getting  them.  It  is  rather  late  in  the  day 
for  white  men  to  go  into  paroxysms  of  grief  and  indignation 
over  commercial  methods  which  they  themselves  have  long 
practised. 

I  do  not  mean  that  such  methods  should  be  condoned  in 
the  Japanese  or  any  one  else,  and  I  gladly  add  that  the 
American  and  British  firms  now  engaged  in  the  Asiatic 
trade  include  many  men  of  the  best  business  type  and  of 
high  personal  character.  I  am  simply  calling  attention  to 
the  fact  that  the  Japanese  are  a  strong,  alert,  aggressive 
people  who  have  precisely  those  ambitions  for  supremacy 
which  characterize  white  men.  It  is  unfortunately  true  that 
the  general  tone  of  commercial  morality  in  Japan  has  been 
distinctly  lower  than  hi  Western  nations.  This  was  proba- 
bly due  to  the  fact  that,  until  comparatively  recent  years, 
business  was  largely  in  the  hands  of  a  low  class  of  Japanese. 
Trading  was  long  regarded  as  beneath  the  dignity  of  a 
gentleman.  In  the  old  feudal  days,  the  knightly  classes  de- 
voted themselves  to  arms  and  despised  traders  as  heartily 
as  the  ancient  Jews  despised  the  publicans.  Besides,  the 
priests  of  the  old  religions  of  Japan  ignored  the  relation  of 
religion  to  conduct  and  did  not  educate  the  popular  mind 


290  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

to  that  regard  for  truth  which  Christianity  inculcates.  As 
a  consequence,  the  mercantile  classes  were  chiefly  recruited 
from  men  whose  unscrupulous  greed  was  proof  against  the 
contempt  of  their  fellows — men  who  had  no  standing  to  be 
sacrificed,  and  whose  trickery  and  dishonesty  justified  the 
ill  repute  in  which  they  were  popularly  held. 

The  notorious  Doshisha  scandal  illustrated  the  resultant 
trouble  to  the  foreigner.  The  title  to  the  fine  plant  of  this 
college  of  the  American  Board  of  Commissioners  for  For- 
eign Missions  was  vested  in  Japanese  directors  who  held 
the  property  in  trust  for  the  American  Board.  But  to  the 
consternation  of  the  friends  of  missions,  the  directors  re- 
fused to  acknowledge  the  rights  of  the  real  owners,  and  in 
February,  1898,  actually  repealed  an  "irrevocable"  con- 
stitutional provision  that  Christianity  should  always  be 
the  basis  of  instruction,  banished  religious  teaching,  and 
not  only  made  the  institution  completely  secular,  but 
allowed  anti-Christian  addresses  in  the  chapel.  Protests 
were  unavailing.  Appeals  to  honor  were  received  with  in- 
credulity. For  a  long  time  the  Japanese  could  not  be 
made  to  understand  that  they  had  committed  an  unrighteous 
breach  of  faith,  and  it  was  only  after  the  most  persistent 
efforts  that  the  college  was  restored  to  a  Christian  basis. 

The  Japanese  long  paid  the  penalty  of  the  distrust  which 
the  Doshisha  affair  engendered,  especially  as  many  Japa- 
nese merchants  guilelessly  acted  on  the  same  principle. 
During  my  first  visit  a  merchant  refused  to  accept  a  large 
consignment  of  goods  because  the  price  had  fallen  since  he 
had  placed  the  order,  and  I  was  told  that  a  foreigner  could 
not  always  depend  upon  the  delivery  of  goods  which  he  had 
bought  of  the  Japanese,  if  the  price  had  risen. 

When  feudalism  was  abolished  and  the  daimios  and 
samurai  were  obliged  to  adapt  themselves  to  the  changed 
conditions  of  a  society  in  which  men  had  to  earn  their  own 
living  or  starve,  they  naturally  found  military,  naval,  and 
civil  offices  more  congenial  than  business,  and  their  training 
fitted  them  for  an  efficiency  in  war  and  government  which 
quickly  brought  Japan  to  the  front  in  international  affairs, 


JAPAN'S  COMMERCIAL  DEVELOPMENT  291 

as  the  Russians  learned  to  their  cost.  After  a  time  capable 
men  realized  that  captains  of  industry  rank  as  high  in  the 
modern  world  as  generals  and  admirals,  and  render  as  valu- 
able service  to  their  country,  and  that  if  Japan  expected  to 
take  a  place  among  strong  and  progressive  nations,  a  due 
proportion  of  her  best  men  must  become  bankers,  manufac- 
turers, and  railway  and  steamship  managers.  To-day  many 
of  Japan's  firms  are  managed  by  men  of  unquestioned 
probity  and  reliability,  and  the  old  gibe  about  Chinese 
tellers  in  Japanese  banks  has  lost  its  point.  Modern  Japan 
is  sensitive  to  considerations  of  business  honor,  and  is  out- 
spoken in  condemning  fraud.  The  Jiji  Shimpo,  an  influen- 
tial journal  in  Tokyo,  had  a  strong  editorial  on  this  subject 
in  July,  1916,  and  the  Japanese  Consul-General  at  Bombay, 
India,  frankly  declared  in  a  report: 

"Although  I  am  confident  that  the  credit  of  Japanese  merchants 
in  general  is  not  so  low  as  is  represented  by  a  small  section  of  the 
foreign  merchants,  yet  it  is  to  be  deplored  as  an  indisputable  fact  that 
there  is  one  sort  of  short-sighted  dishonest  Japanese  merchants  who 
are  always  eager  to  obtain  a  temporary  profit  just  before  their  eyes, 
who  resort  to  extremely  detestable  and  crafty  expedients.  They 
will  send  samples  of  goods  far  superior  in  quality  in  comparison  with 
the  price  quoted,  and  when  they  receive  orders  according  to  these 
samples,  they  never  manufacture  goods  equal  to  the  samples  in 
quality,  but  manufacture  and  ship  inferior  goods  suitable  to  the 
price."  l 

Evidently  intelligent  Japanese  are  learning  well  the  les- 
son that  Western  business  men  have  learned  from  hard  ex- 
perience— that  a  reputation  for  trustworthiness  is  the  most 
valuable  asset  that  a  commercial  house  can  have,  and  that 
the  merchant  who  deals  fairly  with  his  customers  prospers 
best  in  the  long  run.  Japan  has  great  commercial  houses 
that  are  as  honestly  and  capably  managed  as  houses  of 
corresponding  rank  in  Europe  and  America,  and  their 
representatives  in  the  metropolitan  cities  of  other  lands  are 
men  of  unchallenged  character  and  ability. 

1  Quoted  in  the  Japan  Weekly  Chronicle,  July  3,  1916. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

THE  STRUGGLE  BETWEEN  AUTOCRACY  AND 
DEMOCRACY  IN  JAPAN 

THE  mighty  democratic  movement  of  the  modern  world 
has  not  failed  to  affect  Japan.  No  nation  in  this  era 
can  wholly  escape  its  influence.  Whether  it  comes  slowly 
or  rapidly,  peacefully  or  violently,  come  it  does.  John  Vis- 
count Morley  in  his  Recollections  well  says  that  "alike 
with  those  who  adore  and  those  who  detest  it,  the  domi- 
nating force  in  the  living  mind  of  Europe  for  a  long  gen- 
eration after  the  overthrow  of  the  French  monarchy  in  1830 
has  been  that  marked  way  of  looking  at  things,  feeling  them, 
handling  them,  judging  main  actors  in  them,  for  which,  with 
a  hundred  kaleidoscopic  turns,  the  accepted  name  is  Lib- 
eralism. .  .  .  Respect  for  the  dignity  and  worth  of  the 
individual  is  its  root.  It  stands  for  pursuit  of  social  good 
against  class  interest  or  dynastic  interest.  It  stands  for 
the  subjection  to  human  judgment  of  all  claims  of  external 
authority,  whether  in  an  organized  church,  or  in  more  loosely 
gathered  societies  of  believers,  or  in  books  held  sacred.  In 
lawmaking  it  does  not  neglect  the  higher  characteristics  of 
human  nature,  it  attends  to  them  first." 

This  force  has  banished  kings  from  North  and  South 
America,  France,  and  Portugal;  wrested  power  from  throne 
and  aristocracy  in  Great  Britain;  convinced  sovereigns  in 
Belgium,  Holland,  Denmark,  Sweden,  Norway,  Italy,  and 
Greece  that  they  must  walk  carefully  as  constitutional 
rulers;  overturned  autocratic  government  in  Russia,  and, 
aided  by  the  invincible  armies  and  navies  of  the  free 
nations  of  the  West,  it  has  wrought  the  downfall  of  the 
haughty  German  Hohenzollerns  and  Austrian  Hapsburgs. 
The  race  is  emerging  once  for  all  from  the  stage  of  develop- 

292 


AUTOCRACY  AND  DEMOCRACY  IN  JAPAN       293 

ment  in  which,  irrespective  of  personal  qualifications,  a  few 
persons  can  be  permitted  to  arrogate  to  themselves  the  right 
to  rule  as  they  please  millions  of  their  fellow  men  because 
they  imagine  themselves  to  be  divinely  appointed  rulers 
by  virtue  of  descent  from  ancestors,  some  of  whom  were 
dissolute  idlers  and  most  of  whom,  if  compelled  to  earn 
their  own  living,  would  never  have  become  anything  more 
than  clerks  behind  the  ribbon  counters  of  department 
stores.  The  few  really  great  kings,  like  Albert  of  Belgium, 
do  not  need  the  trappings  of  inherited  royalty,  for  they 
would  have  risen  to  eminence  if  they  had  been  born  in 
cabins. 

A  decade  ago  one  might  have  supposed  that  Asia  would 
be  the  last  to  reconstruct  governments  on  the  basis  of  the 
rights  of  the  people.  But  to  the  amazement  of  mankind,  the 
opening  decades  of  the  twentieth  century  saw  the  ground- 
swell  of  humanity  beginning  to  manifest  itself  even  in  that 
age-old  citadel  of  despotism.  Persia  and  Turkey  have  seen 
the  beginnings  of  constitutional  government,  poor  and  weak 
beginnings,  travesties  of  freedom  indeed,  but  nevertheless 
marking  the  inauguration  of  a  new  era.  India  is  seething 
with  the  spirit  of  unrest.  It  was  strenuously  demanding  a 
larger  measure  of  self-government  before  the  outbreak  of 
the  European  War,  and  the  assistance  that  the  Indian 
princes  gave  to  Great  Britain  in  that  titanic  struggle  was 
undoubtedly  influenced  in  some  degree  by  the  expectation 
that  they  would  be  repaid  by  liberal  concessions  after  the 
war.  China  has  amazed  the  world  by  overthrowing  her 
dynasty  and  establishing  a  republic,  carrying  through  that 
stupendous  revolution  in  an  incredibly  brief  period  and  with 
less  loss  of  life  than  attended  a  single  battle  of  the  European 
War.  It  is  true  that  Yuan  Shih  Kai  became  a  dictator 
under  the  title  of  President,  but  it  was  profoundly  significant 
that  the  republican  idea  had  gained  such  a  hold  upon  the 
imagination  of  the  Chinese  people  that  when,  December 
12,  1915,  Yuan  Shih  Kai  announced  that  he  would  become 
Emperor,  rebellion  immediately  broke  out  and  became  so 
formidable  that  even  that  man  of  blood  and  iron  found  it 


294  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

prudent  to  bow  before  the  storm.  January  23,  1916,  he 
deemed  it  the  part  of  wisdom  to  say  that  he  would  post- 
pone his  coronation  indefinitely;  and  March  23  he  declared 
that  he  had  decided  to  decline  the  "proffered"  crown.  But 
he  had  lost  the  confidence  of  the  country  and  stirred  up  a 
protest  which  made  his  position  so  impossible  that  his 
death,  June  6  of  that  year,  was  generally  regarded  as  most 
opportune.  China  has  a  weary  road  to  travel  before  the 
discordant  elements  of  her  vast  population  settle  them- 
selves into  a  compact  and  well-governed  republic;  but  the 
monarchy  has  gone  beyond  possibility  of  recovery. 

It  was  inevitable  that  Japan  should  feel  the  impulse  of 
this  rising  tide  of  popular  will.  When  one  considers  the 
history  and  social  and  political  organization  of  the  Japa- 
nese people  he  is  not  surprised  to  find  that  the  modern 
movement  has  made  rather  slow  headway  thus  far.  Feudal- 
ism was  not  abolished  till  1871,  and  it  was  not  till  1889  that 
the  Constitution  was  formally  promulgated.  It  was  a  great 
day  for  Japan  when  the  first  Imperial  Diet  convened, 
November  29,  1890.  It  consists  of  a  House  of  Peers  and 
a  House  of  Representatives.  The  former  comprises  379 
members  as  follows:  12  princes  of  the  blood  royal,  13  other 
princes  and  33  marquises,  all  of  whom  have  seats  by  virtue 
of  their  rank;  17  counts,  68  viscounts  and  66  barons,  chosen 
by  the  noblemen  of  these  orders;  122  men  of  distinguished 
position  appointed  by  the  Emperor,  and  48  of  the  largest 
taxpayers  in  the  Empire.  The  House  of  Representatives 
is  a  popular  body  consisting  of  381  members  who  are  elected 
by  male  Japanese  subjects  not  less  than  twenty-five  years 
of  age  and  paying  a  direct  tax  of  ten  yen  or  more. 

The  House  did  not  immediately  find  itself.  Gradually, 
however,  its  members  began  to  give  voice  to  their  opinions 
and  even  to  criticise  the  acts  or  policies  of  the  Cabinet. 
But  the  mental  attitude  developed  by  centuries  of  implicit 
obedience  to  feudal  chieftains  is  not  readily  changed.  The 
surprising  thing  is  that  the  popular  will  has  found  any  ex- 
pression at  all  within  so  short  a  period.  To-day,  debates  in 
the  Diet  are  often  animated  and  sometimes  sharply  critical 


AUTOCRACY  AND  DEMOCRACY  IN  JAPAN       295 

of  the  government,  and  the  daily  and  weekly  press  is  out- 
spoken. 

But  ruling  classes  everywhere  do  not  lightly  yield  their 
prerogatives.  They  believe  with  the  German  philosopher 
Hegel  that  "the  people  is  that  portion  of  the  state  which 
does  not  know  what  it  wills/'  and  with  the  Prussian  Minister 
von  Rochow,  who  spoke  of  "  the  limited  intelligence  of  sub- 
jects." In  Japan,  the  ruling  class  has  the  power  in  its  own 
hands.  The  aristocratic  House  of  Peers  is  at  a  far  remove 
from  the  people  and  wholly  beyond  their  reach.  The  ad- 
ministration of  the  government  is  vested  in  a  Cabinet  of 
ten  Ministers  of  State,  including  the  Premier,  appointed 
by  the  Emperor.  A  Privy  Council  with  a  President,  Vice- 
President  and  twenty-four  Councillors  advises  with  the  Em- 
peror in  matters  of  importance. 

This  organization  of  the  state  is  a  great  advance  upon 
the  feudalism  which  it  supplanted,  and  it  gives  Japan  a  re- 
markably capable  and  efficient  government.  But  modern 
Japan  can  hardly  be  called  democratic.  A  nation  which 
regards  its  sovereign  as  a  ruler  by  divine  right  and  a  demi- 
god to  be  worshipped,  and  whose  real  government  is  not 
in  the  hands  of  any  constitutional  body  or  person  but  of  a 
small  group  of  "Elder  Statesmen" — such  a  nation  is  not 
yet  under  the  sway  of  those  conceptions  of  popular  govern- 
ment which  are  current  in  the  most  advanced  Western 
nations. 

These  Elder  Statesmen,  or  Genro,  constitute  a  body  which 
should  not  be  overlooked  by  any  one  who  wishes  to  under- 
stand Japanese  political  affairs.  They  have  no  legal  status. 
"They  are  not  recognized  in  the  Japanese  Constitution 
nor  in  the  laws  of  Japan."  l  They  are  merely  a  little  group 
of  old  men  of  high  rank  who  have  become  trusted  advisers 
of  the  Emperor.  The  prerogatives  of  the  crown  are  great, 
and  they  are  exercised  as  the  Elder  Statesmen  "advise." 
Theoretically  the  Cabinet  represents  the  throne;  prac- 
tically the  Elder  Statesmen  represent  it.  The  Japanese 
Cabinet  does  not  wield  the  power  of  the  British  Cabinet. 

1  The  Tokyo  Ashai, 


296  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

Changes  in  ministerial  personnel  seldom  effect  changes  in 
national  policy,  for  the  Emperor  remains  and  he  does  what 
the  Genro  tell  him  to  do.  The  latter,  therefore,  are  really 
the  supreme  governing  body.  Ministers  rise  and  fall,  but 
the  Elder  Statesmen  abide,  independent  of  Cabinet  and 
Diet  alike  and  beyond  the  reach  of  either.  If  the  official 
bodies  do  not  agree  with  the  Genro,  so  much  the  worse  for 
the  official  bodies. 

Seldom  mindful  of  the  opinion  of  the  people,  usually  in- 
deed defiant  of  it,  there  was  a  time  in  the  early  months  of 
1914  when  the  Genro  deemed  it  prudent  to  do  what  astute 
political  managers  in  America  occasionally  do — give  out- 
ward recognition  to  a  wave  of  popular  feeling  by  acquiescing 
in  the  choice  of  a  popular  idol  for  high  office,  in  the  hope 
that  if  they  cannot  manage  him  directly  they  may  be  able 
to  do  so  by  their  control  of  the  agencies  through  which  he 
will  be  obliged  to  work.  Scandals  in  governmental  depart- 
ments under  Prime  Minister  Yamamoto  stung  the  nation 
to  the  quick,  and  hi  the  turmoil  the  Cabinet  went  to  pieces. 
The  Elder  Statesmen  chose  ofte  "trusted"  man  after  an- 
other to  form  a  new  Cabinet,  but  no  one  of  them  could 
succeed.  The  situation  was  becoming  serious  when  the 
great  popularity  of  Marquis  Shigenobu  Okuma  and  the  belief 
that  his  advanced  age  would  prevent  him  from  being  active, 
at  any  rate  for  any  considerable  period,  led  the  Genro  to 
offer  him  the  post.  They  did  this  with  many  misgivings, 
for  Okuma  was  not  a  member  of  "The  Old  Guard  "  but  was 
the  acknowledged  head  of  the  constitutional  party.  He 
stood  as  strongly  as  any  one  for  the  throne  and  for  Im- 
perial Japan,  but  with  due  recognition  of  the  voice  of  the 
nation  as  expressed  through  the  Imperial  Diet.  But  the 
people  regarded  him  as  the  "Grand  Old  Man"  of  Japan, 
and  popular  demand  for  him  became  too  loud  to  be  pru- 
dently resisted  at  a  time  when  "The  Old  Guard"  had  been 
thrown  on  the  defensive  by  disclosures  of  corruption  which 
could  not  be  excused. 

Okuma  intensified  both  the  misgivings  of  the  Elder 
Statesmen  and  the  hopes  of  the  constitutionalists  by  the 


AUTOCRACY  AND  DEMOCRACY  IN  JAPAN       297 

vigor  with  which  he  undertook  reforms.  He  believed  that 
a  programme  of  peaceful  development  of  internal  social  and 
economic  conditions  was  more  important  than  an  aggres- 
sive foreign  and  militaristic  policy.  Unfortunately,  the 
outbreak  of  the  European  War  and  the  resultant  changes  in 
the  Far  Eastern  situation  worked  a  corresponding  change  in 
Okuma's  policy.  Foreign  affairs  quickly  took  precedence 
of  internal  ones.  Questions  of  home  administration  fell 
into  the  background  before  Great  Britain's  request  to  drive 
the  Germans  out  of  the  province  of  Shantung  on  the  main- 
land, the  opportunity  to  seize  the  German  islands  in  the 
Pacific  and  thus  eliminate  a  powerful  rival  to  Japan's 
policy  of  supremacy  in  the  Far  East,  and,  most  attractive 
of  all,  the  chance  to  strengthen  Japan's  influence  hi  China 
while  the  European  Powers  were  so  preoccupied  at  home 
that  they  could  interpose  no  effective  objection. 

These  developments  necessarily  brought  the  imperialistic 
military  party  to  the  front  again  and  compelled  Okuma  to 
work  with  it.  And  so  the  world  saw  the  interesting  spec- 
tacle of  the  venerable  advocate  of  popular  rights  and  the 
precedence  of  internal  affairs  working  hand  in  hand  with  the 
party  which  deemed  the  time  propitious  for  establishing 
Japan's  supremacy  as  the  overlord  of  eastern  Asia.  This 
situation  was  not  altogether  agreeable  to  him  and,  together 
with  the  burden  of  great  age,  criticisms  of  his  handling  of 
relations  with  China,  and  an  election  scandal  which  in- 
volved his  Minister  of  Home  Affairs  and  weakened  the  in- 
fluence of  the  Cabinet,  led  him  to  the  decision  to  resign  his 
post  as  Prime  Minister.  It  was  significant  of  the  power 
which  the  Elder  Statesmen  held  that,  before  the  public 
announcement  of  his  retirement,  October  4,  1916,  he  re- 
spectfully asked  permission  of  the  Elder  Statesmen,  and 
that  when  he  recommended  Viscount  Takaaki  Kato  as  his 
successor,  in  accordance  with  the  known  wishes  of  the 
Diet,  the  Elder  Statesmen  calmly  disregarded  the  recom- 
mendation and  the  popular  will  and  chose  Viscount  Seiki 
Terauchi,  then  Governor-General  of  Korea. 

This  selection  illustrated  not  only  the  ascendancy  of  the 


298  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

Elder  Statesmen,  but  a  trend  in  the  government  of  Japan 
which  is  distinctively  the  reverse  of  democratic.  The  Elder 
Statesmen  at  this  time  were  Prince  Yamagata,  Prince 
Oyama,  and  Marquis  Matsukata,  Prince  Yamagata  being 
the  dominant  figure.  These  men,  of  great  ability  and  force 
of  character,  were  strongly  of  the  opinion  that  the  Cabinet 
should  be  responsible  to  the  throne  rather  than  to  the  Diet, 
which  really  meant  that  it  be  responsible  to  them.  Marquis 
Okuma,  however,  was  the  head  of  the  party  which  held 
that  the  Cabinet  should  be  accountable  to  the  Diet,  and 
through  that  body  to  the  people.  The  issue,  therefore,  was 
really  between  autocracy  and  democracy.  And  autocracy 
won. 

Great  was  the  satisfaction  in  army  circles  and  equally 
great  the  dissatisfaction  in  other  quarters.  The  popular 
press,  not  only  in  America  and  Great  Britain  but  in  Japan, 
was  outspoken  in  opposition.  The  objection  was  not  so 
much  to  Terauchi  personally  as  to  the  autocratic  and  mili- 
taristic party  that  he  represented.  The  Tokyo  Ashai 
sharply  said:  "The  Genro  should  have  respected  the  opin- 
ion of  the  Premier  and  should  have  paid  attention  to  his 
recommendation  of  the  leader  of  the  majority  as  his  suc- 
cessor." The  Tokyo  Nichi-nichi  boldly  declared :  "There  is 
no  doubt  that  a  Terauchi  ministry  will  be  opposed  by  the 
nation.  The  question  is  whether  or  not  the  government  of 
Japan  is  to  be  conducted  to  forward  the  wishes  of  the 
people  and  whether  the  spirit  of  the  Constitution  is  to  be 
fulfilled."  The  Japan  Advertiser  added :  "  The  Elder  States- 
men have  once  more  conferred  on  Japan  a  Cabinet  devoid 
of  any  pretense  of  connection  with  representative  institu- 
tions. Once  more  it  is  demonstrated  that  all  the  appur- 
tenances of  popular  government  with  which  we  are  familiar 
— the  voters,  registers,  the  elections,  the  legislators,  and  the 
parties — are  a  Western  fagade  run  up  to  modernize  an  old- 
style  personal-government  edifice  of  which  the  interior 
arrangements  are  uniquely  Japanese." 

While  the  autocracy  of  Japan  is  almost  as  absolute  as 
was  the  autocracy  of  Russia  prior  to  the  revolution,  it  is  a 


AUTOCRACY  AND  DEMOCRACY  IN  JAPAN       299 

more  enlightened  and  efficient  autocracy,  and  it  put  forward 
a  good  representative  in  Viscount  Terauchi.  He  is  an 
able,  efficient,  and  masterful  man,  one  of  the  outstanding 
personalities  of  Asia.  He  is,  moreover,  honest,  patriotic 
and  well-meaning.  But  he  is  an  autocrat  in  every  fibre  of 
his  being.  A  field-marshal  in  the  army,  he  is  a  soldier  by 
training,  profession,  and  temperament — a  great  soldier  and 
a  good  autocrat — but  pre-eminently  a  soldier  and  an  auto- 
crat as  distinguished  from  a  civilian  and  a  man  of  the 
people.  He  wants  to  do  what  he  deems  to  be  for  the  best 
interests  of  his  country.  When  he  makes  mistakes  they  are 
not  those  of  intention  or  corruption.  He  sincerely  believes 
that  Japan  can  best  fulfil  its  high  destiny  as  a  Power  of  the 
first  class,  and  as  the  leader  and  guardian  of  eastern  Asia 
against  further  aggressions  of  Western  nations,  by  having 
a  strong  centralized  government  that  is  free  to  act  without 
being  obliged  to  obey  a  popular  assembly,  whose  members 
might  not  act  with  adequate  knowledge  or  under  a  due 
sense  of  responsibility.  A  Samurai  of  the  Choshu  Clan, 
to  which  Prince  Yamagata  and  Prince  Ito  also  belonged, 
born  February  5,  1852,  he  has  been  a  soldier  from  his  youth. 
After  his  graduation  from  the  Military  Academy  at  Osaka, 
he  was  commissioned  a  sublieutenant  in  1871.  He  re- 
ceived his  baptism  of  fire  in  the  civil  war  of  Kyushu,  in 
1878,  in  which  he  received  a  wound  which  permanently 
disabled  his  right  arm.  The  post  of  military  attache  to 
the  Japanese  legation  in  Paris,  from  1882  to  1885,  gave 
him  a  knowledge  of  European  military  and  diplomatic 
methods.  After  his  return  to  Japan  he  became  professor 
in  the  Military  Academy.  He  was  a  Major-General  in  the 
China-Japan  War.  Then  he  was  appointed  Inspector- 
General  of  Military  Education  and  Vice-Chief  of  the  Gen- 
eral Staff.  He  was  Minister  of  War  in  the  Cabinet  formed 
by  Count  Katsura,  in  1902.  He  foresaw  the  coming  strug- 
gle with  Russia,  and  it  was  due  in  no  small  part  to  his  re- 
markable ability  and  energy  that  the  Japanese  army  was 
so  well  prepared  for  its  victorious  progress  through  Korea 
and  Manchuria.  The  grateful  government  made  him  a 


300  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

Viscount.  When,  in  1911,  the  strongest  available  man 
was  sought  to  succeed  Prince  Ito  as  Governor-General  of 
Korea,  Terauchi,  still  Minister  of  War,  was  chosen  for  that 
high  office,  which  is  to  the  Japanese  what  the  Vice-Royalty 
of  India  is  to  the  British,  and  which,  in  Terauchi's  case, 
carried  with  it  membership  in  the  Supreme  Military  Coun- 
cil of  the  Empire.  His  five  years'  administration  of  that 
great  dependency  is  discussed  in  other  chapters.  From 
this  post  he  was  summoned  by  the  Elder  Statesmen  to  be- 
come the  Prime  Minister  of  Japan. 

The  new  Premier  early  took  occasion  to  assure  public 
opinion  in  other  countries  of  his  pacific  intentions  by  say- 
ing in  a  published  statement:  "Since  there  seems  to  have 
been  apprehension  in  some  American  circles  as  to  the  course 
I  shall  follow,  I  am  willing  and  anxious  to  say  that  I  have 
no  desire  to  govern  with  the  sword.  One  who  expects  that 
of  me  does  not  understand  the  tasks  I  have  performed, 
nor  the  spirit  in  which  I  performed  them."  It  is  only  fair 
for  his  critics  to  credit  him  with  sincerity.  He  is  a  straight- 
forward man  and  he  speaks  frankly.  Like  some  other  great 
soldiers,  he  prefers  peace  to  war.  But  his  point  of  view  is 
that  of  the  army  and  the  court  rather  than  that  of  democ- 
racy in  the  British  and  American  sense.  Viscount,  now 
Count,  Terauchi  was  a  strong  Premier,  but  he  was  guided 
by  the  opinion  of  the  Genro  and  not  by  that  of  the  Diet 
as  the  representative  of  the  nation.  He  believed  that  power 
should  come  from  above  and  not  from  below,  that  the  court 
and  nobility  should  rule  and  that  the  people  should  obey. 
He  was  not  a  Gladstone  but  a  Bismarck;  with  this  differ- 
ence, that  back  of  him  were  the  all-powerful  Elder  States- 
men to  whom  even  he  had  to  bow.  Japan  during  his  prem- 
iership was  efficiently  governed,  but  the  government  was 
in  the  hands  of  the  party  which  stood  for  absolutism  and  an 
imperialistic  policy  in  the  Far  East.  If  Western  nations 
imagined  that  they  could  henceforth  decide  Asiatic  matters 
to  suit  themselves,  as  they  had  been  doing  in  the  past, 
they  were  reckoning  without  prudent  regard  for  a  Japan 
led  by  the  masterful  Yamagata  and  the  resolute  Terauchi. 


AUTOCRACY  AND  DEMOCRACY  IN  JAPAN       301 

A  well-known  Japanese  in  America,  in  defending  his 
native  land  before  an  audience  which  was  cheering  the 
world's  growing  demand  for  popular  government,  rightly 
argued  that  "democracy  is  no  synonym  for  republic." 
But  the  situation  in  Japan  hardly  bears  out  his  further 
statement  that,  if  the  former  is  rightly  defined,  "present- 
day  Japan  is  as  much  a  democracy  as  the  United  States, 
England,  France,  Italy  and  the  newly  formed  democracy  of 
Russia."  It  is  true  that  Marquis  Okuma  himself  said  to  a 
newspaper  reporter  after  his  retirement  from  office:  "Japan 
is  not  ruled  by  a  small  group  of  politicians,  or  by  a  minis- 
try, but  by  public  opinion.  It  has  been  so  for  many  years." l 
Perhaps  he  felt  that  patriotism  made  it  desirable  to  speak 
in  this  way  to  the  representative  of  a  foreign  newspaper. 
But  he  had  said  to  his  own  people  on  a  former  occasion: 
"Certainly  it  does  not  appear  to  be  the  policy  of  Japanese 
diplomacy  to  voice  the  views  of  the  people  and  their  rep- 
resentatives in  the  Imperial  Diet.  Our  Foreign  Office  has 
as  a  rule  overlooked  or  disregarded  public  opinion.  In 
most  countries  the  co-operation  of  public  opinion  and  diplo- 
matic policy  is  thought  to  be  most  conducive  to  the  best 
interests  of  the  state;  but  in  Japan  diplomats  are  a  class 
apart."  2  The  Japan  Society  Bulletin  of  New  York  char- 
acterized the  general  election  in  the  spring  of  1917  as 
"a  fight  for  control  between  the  Military  Bureaucrats  and 
the  Constitutionalists."3  And  "the  Military  Bureaucrats" 
prevailed. 

The  attitude  of  the  dominant  party  was  significantly 
illustrated  within  a  few  weeks  after  the  Terauchi  Cabinet 
took  office.  The  Honorable  Daikichiro  Tagawa,  a  Chris- 
tian gentleman  of  high  standing,  formerly  a  member  of  the 
Imperial  Diet,  and  for  five  years  one  of  the  two  vice- 
mayors  of  Tokyo,  published  three  articles  in  January,  1917, 
in  which  he  criticised  the  government  in  language  that 
would  be  considered  commonplace  in  America,  where  the 

1  Interview  reported  in  the  Christian  Herald,  Dec.  13,  1916. 

2  Reported  in  the  Japan  Magazine,  Tokyo,  June,  1913. 
8  Bulletin  of  April  30,  1917. 


302  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

opponents  of  the  party  in  power  are  accustomed  to  pour 
out  vituperative  tirades  upon  the  President  and  his  ad- 
visers. He  compared  the  method  of  choosing  a  premier  in 
Great  Britain  with  the  method  in  Japan;  King  George 
selecting  the  man  whom  the  people  desired,  and  the  Emperor 
the  man  designated  by  the  Elder  Statesmen  without  regard 
to  the  popular  will.  "The  whole  Empire/'  added  Mr. 
Tagawa,  "recognizes  that  the  Terauchi  Cabinet  was  formed 
by  the  Elder  Statesmen  rather  than  by  the  imperial  com- 
mands. By  such  means  it  is  futile  to  think  that  the  people 
can  be  made  to  respect  the  imperial  house.  In  fact  it  must 
be  said  with  regret  that  the  dignity  of  the  imperial  house 
has  been  not  a  little  impaired  by  such  procedure." 

This  was  held  to  be  lese-majesty,  as  reflecting  upon  the 
Emperor  and  implying  that  he,  who  is  of  divine  origin,  is 
in  the  same  class  as  King  George  and  the  men  on  thrones 
in  other  lands.  At  the  instigation  of  the  Cabinet  Mr. 
Tagawa  was  arrested  and  sentenced  to  be  imprisoned  for 
five  months  and  to  pay  a  fine  of  one  hundred  dollars.  Not 
only  this,  but  Mr.  Kashiwai,  editor  of  the  Bummei  Hyoron, 
in  which  this  article  appeared,  was  also  arrested  and  sen- 
tenced to  two  months'  imprisonment  and  a  fine  of  sixty 
dollars.  Article  XXIX  of  the  Constitution  guarantees  that 
"Japanese  subjects  shall,  within  the  limits  of  law,  enjoy 
the  liberty  of  speech,  writing,  publication,  public  meeting, 
and  association,"  but  these  writings  were  held  to  be  not 
"within  the  limits  of  law." 

This  stern  decisiveness  was  displayed  not  only  toward 
the  press  but  toward  the  Imperial  Diet  itself.  In  January, 
1917,  members  of  the  House  of  Representatives  ventured 
to  raise  the  issue  of  parliamentary  responsibility  and  a 
sharp  debate  ensued,  vigorously  led  by  Mr.  Yukio  Ozaki, 
leader  of  the  Constitutional  party,  and  Mr.  Takashi  Inukai, 
leader  of  the  Kokuminto  or  National  party.  Believers  in 
democratic  institutions  in  other  lands  are  glad  to  know 
that  the  party  of  the  people  is  already  strong  enough  in 
Japan  to  find  bold  advocates  in  the  Diet.  In  this  debate, 
the  tide  of  opposition  to  the  course  of  the  government  rose 


AUTOCRACY  AND  DEMOCRACY  IN  JAPAN       303 

high,  and  Terauchi  found  himself  confronted  with  the 
probability  of  an  adverse  vote  on  a  question  of  confidence 
in  the  ministry.  He  did  not  flinch  an  iota.  Rising,  he  de- 
clared that  the  situation  involved  the  prosperity  of  the 
Empire,  and  that  while  he  maintained  the  confidence  of  the 
Emperor  he  could  not  accept  the  verdict  of  the  House. 
Angry  members  rose  to  protest,  but  he  stood  his  ground 
and  demonstrated  his  power  and  his  willingness  to  use 
it  by  having  the  Emperor  dissolve  the  Diet  January  25. 
The  discomfited  members  had  no  alternative  but  to  go  home. 
This  occurrence  has  been  construed  as  supporting  the 
opinion  that  Carl  Crow  expressed  in  his  book  entitled  Japan 
and  America — A  Contrast:  that  Japan  is  absolutely  ruled  by 
a  small  group  of  resolute  men  who  dominate  the  Emperor 
and  the  people  alike  so  that  the  former  is  a  mere  puppet  in 
their  hands  and  the  latter  an  ignorant  and  acquiescent 
proletariat  which  is  not  consulted  in  any  important  matter. 
But  this  is  going  too  far.  The  Emperor  of  Japan  is  not 
"a  mere  puppet."  It  is  true  that  the  organization  of  the 
government  and  the  course  of  affairs  make  it  clear  that, 
however  great  his  constitutional  powers  may  be,  these 
powers  are  exercised  through  the  Genro  and  the  Premier 
whom  the  Genro  virtually  selects.  But  high  rank  among 
sovereigns  must  be  accorded  to  the  late  Emperor,  his  Im- 
perial Majesty  Mutsuhito,  in  whose  long  reign  of  forty-five 
years  Japan  passed  from  a  backward  to  a  progressive  na- 
tion. The  present  Emperor,  his  Imperial  Majesty  Yoshi- 
hito,  the  one  hundred  and  twenty-second  Emperor  of 
Japan,  was  born  August  31,  1879,  and  ascended  the  throne 
on  the  death  of  his  honored  father,  July  30,  1912.  While 
he  is  more  frequently  seen  by  his  subjects  than  his  prede- 
cessor was,  his  actual  influence  in  affairs  of  state  cannot 
yet  be  definitely  appraised  as  his  reign  has  not  been  long, 
and  all  governmental  actions  of  course  reach  the  public 
through  the  Premier  or  other  officials.  General  comment 
refers  to  him  as  a  man  of  excellent  character  and  inten- 
tions, intelligent,  patriotic,  and  worthy  of  the  respect  of  his 
people. 


304  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

Nor  am  I  willing  to  concede  that  the  people  of  Japan 
are  adequately  described  as  "an  ignorant  and  acquiescent 
proletariat."  It  would  be  unreasonable  to  expect  that  the 
democratic  spirit  could  pervade  the  people  of  Japan  in  sixty 
years  to  the  extent  that  it  has  pervaded  Western  nations 
after  hundreds  of  years.  It  is  highly  creditable  to  the  Japa- 
nese that  already  they  have  developed  a  small  group  of  ex- 
ceptionally strong  and  capable  leaders  to  guide  the  nation 
through  the  period  of  transition.  Some  of  these  men,  as  for 
example  Prince  Ito,  Marquis  Okuma,  and  Viscount  Kato, 
have  high  place  among  the  progressive  statesmen  of  the 
modern  era.  It  is  not  surprising  that  long  and  deeply- 
rooted  absolutism  is  still  incarnated  hi  other  equally  power- 
ful men  and  that  the  latter  have  succeeded  in  retaining  the 
ascendancy  for  a  time. 

The  Japanese  will  work  out  the  problem  of  relative  pre- 
eminence in  their  own  way.  The  issue  of  democracy  versus 
autocracy  is  joined  there  as  it  has  been  everywhere  else  in 
the  modern  world.  Men  in  the  Island  Empire  are  asking: 
Do  the  people  exist  for  the  state  or  the  state  for  the  people  ? 
Should  the  cabinet  be  responsible  to  a  monarch  or  to  a 
parliament?  Should  final  supremacy  be  lodged  in  an  em- 
peror or  in  a  body  chosen  by  the  people  ?  The  parliamentary 
leader,  Mr.  Ozaki,  said,  shortly  after  an  attempt  had  been 
made  to  assassinate  him:  "To  make  the  situation  as  clear 
as  possible  to  the  American  people,  let  me  say  simply  that 
our  aim  is  that  the  ministers  of  state  who  direct  the  affairs 
of  this  Empire  shall  be  chosen  with  some  regard  for  the 
make-up  of  the  House  of  Representatives,  which  is  elected 
by  the  people.  That  is,  after  all,  the  essential  meaning 
of  our  Constitution." 

This  element  in  the  nation  is  certain  to  prevail  sooner  or 
later,  for  "the  stars  in  their  courses"  fight  for  it.  It  had 
become  strong  enough  by  the  summer  of  1918  to  make  the 
tenure  of  Count  Terauchi  rather  precarious,  and  on  Sep- 
tember 21  he  found  it  expedient  to  resign.  He  was  suc- 
ceeded by  the  Honorable  Kei  Kara,  leader  of  the  Constitu- 
tional party  known  as  Rikken  Seiyukai,  originally  formed 


AUTOCRACY  AND  DEMOCRACY  IN  JAPAN       305 

by  Prince  Ito,  and  which  had  opposed  the  administration  of 
Terauchi.  Prime  Minister  Kei  Hara  was  sixty-four  years 
of  age,  a  trained  lawyer,  an  eminent  journalist  (editor-in- 
chief  of  the  Mainichi  Shimbun  of  Osaka),  and  a  man  of 
considerable  experience  in  diplomatic  life,  having  served 
as  Consul  in  Tien-tsin,  China,  Secretary  and  Charge"  d'Af- 
faires  of  the  embassy  in  Paris  in  1886,  Director  of  the  Com- 
mercial Bureau  and  Vice-Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs  in 
Tokyo  in  1895,  Minister  to  Korea,  1896-1897,  Minister  of 
Communications,  1900-1901,  and  Minister  of  Home  Affairs, 
1906-1907.  He  visited  Europe  and  America  in  1908-1909, 
and  returned  to  the  Ministry  of  Home  Affairs  in  1911,  and 
again  in  1913-1914.  He  was  one  of  Prince  Ito's  principal 
supporters  in  founding  the  Seiyukai  party  in  1900,  and  in 
1914  he  succeeded  Marquis  Saionji  in  its  leadership. 

We  may  add  that  the  English  terms  applied  to  political 
parties  in  Japan:  Seiyukai  (Liberal),  Kenseikai  (Con- 
servative, the  result  of  a  fusion  in  1913  which  supported 
the  Cabinet  of  Marquis  Okuma),  and  Kokuminto  (Nation- 
alist-Progressive) should  not  be  interpreted  too  literally, 
as  these  parties  are  often  little  more  than  groups  around 
particular  leaders.  No  one  party  has  a  majority,  their 
present  strength  in  the  House  of  Representatives  being: 
Seiyukai  162,  Kenseikai  122,  Kokuminto  36,  Independents 
61,  total  381.  The  important  point  now  is  that  the  party 
of  which  Mr.  Hara  is  the  head  represents  the  strongest 
democratic  tendencies.  It  is  a  long  step  from  the  plat- 
form of  Count  Terauchi  to  that  of  Mr.  Hara.  Both  men 
have  fine  qualities;  but  the  friends  of  Japan  in  other  lands, 
while  gladly  recognizing  the  great  abilities  of  the  former 
Premier,  naturally  anticipate  with  satisfaction  the  develop- 
ment of  democratic  tendencies  under  the  leadership  of  the 
latter,  if  the  political  kaleidoscope  does  not  soon  take  a 
turn  that  will  displace  him.  He  has  surrounded  himself 
with  men  of  kindred  spirit.  The  Foreign  Minister  is  Vis- 
count Y.  Uchida,  a  progressive  man  who  is  well  and  favor- 
ably known  in  America.  He  has  had  a  conspicuous  diplo- 
matic career  for  a  man  who  is  not  yet  fifty  years  of  age,  as 


306  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

he  has  not  only  had  service  as  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs 
in  Tokyo,  but  as  Secretary  of  Legation  in  Peking  and  Lon- 
don, and  Ambassador  in  Vienna  and  Washington.  He 
knows  the  modern  world.  His  wife,  by  the  way,  is  a 
graduate  of  Vassar  College,  New  York.  The  Minister  of 
Home  Affairs  is  Mr.  Tokonami,  who  has  visited  Europe  and 
America,  and  who,  in  1912,  when  Vice-Minister  of  Home 
Affairs,  was  so  impressed  by  the  necessity  of  religion  in  a 
nation's  life  that  he  arranged  the  conference  of  representa- 
tives of  religions  which  we  have  described  in  another  chapter. 
The  outside  world  should  not  expect  any  sudden  or  de- 
cisive change  hi  the  national  policy  of  Japan.  The  Seiyu- 
kai  party  is  absolutely  loyal  to  the  traditions  of  historic 
Japan  and  is  patriotic  to  the  core.  But  it  is  far  more 
democratic  hi  its  tendencies  than  the  party  that  was  rep- 
resented by  Viscount  Terauchi,  and  it  favored  co-operation 
with  the  United  States  in  the  Siberian  intervention,  which 
will  be  discussed  in  a  later  chapter.  Of  the  three  powerful 
Elder  Statesmen,  two  are  over  eighty  years  of  age,  and  the 
other  has  passed  seventy.  In  the  course  of  nature,  they 
must  soon  pass  from  the  stage  of  human  affairs,  and  it  is 
doubtful  whether  they  will  have  successors  of  the  same 
type.  Democratic  sentiment  among  the  Japanese  has 
made  striking  growth  within  the  last  year,  and  it  will  surely 
prevail  in  time.  That  influential  Japanese,  Doctor  Dan  jo 
Ebina,  has  said  that  "the  German  system  suited  the  spirit 
of  militarism  and  imperialism  that  still  obtained  in  certain 
quarters,  and  gave  to  Japan  a  philosophy  of  absolutism 
which  had  a  fascination  for  some  minds,"  but  that  "the 
defeat  of  German  militarism  and  imperialism  on  the  battle- 
fields of  Europe  means  the  defeat  of  these  doctrines  all  the 
world  over."  He  declares  that  "the  greatest  crisis  in 
Japanese  history  is  impending,"  and  that  "when  this  shell 
of  Japanese  nationalism  breaks,  the  people  of  this  country 
will  become  an  international  people,  the  universalism  of 
Christ  will  take  the  place  of  Buddhism,  and  Christianity 
will  become  the  religion  of  international  Japan."1 

1  Quoted  in  Millard's  Review,  Shanghai,  August  17,  1918. 


CHAPTER  XIX 
SOCIAL  AND  ECONOMIC  CONDITIONS 

DESPITE  the  growing  wealth  of  the  nation,  the  poverty 
that  still  prevails  among  the  masses  of  the  common  people 
is  illustrated  by  the  statement  of  the  Honorable  Yukio 
Ozaki,  a  member  of  the  Imperial  Diet,  that  there  are  only 
1,500,000  voters  hi  all  the  Empire,  although  there  are 
56,000,000  people  in  Japan  proper,  and  the  suffrage  is  given 
to  all  male  citizens  of  twenty-five  and  over  who  own  prop- 
erty enough  to  pay  a  direct  tax  of  ten  yen  a  year.  The 
tax  rate  is  so  high  that  one  does  not  have  to  own  much 
property  to  be  required  to  pay  a  tax  of  ten  yen. 

The  proportion  of  the  population  that  is  engaged  in  man- 
ual labor  is  large,  and  its  condition  is  far  from  satisfactory. 
Three  million  seven  hundred  and  seven  thousand  and  eighty- 
eight  families  are  wholly  dependent  upon  farming  for  a 
livelihood,  and  1,736,631  other  families,  although  they  have 
some  other  work,  depend  in  large  part  upon  what  they  raise 
from  the  soil.  As  Japanese  families  are  prolific,  this  makes 
about  40,000,000  people  who  depend  for  subsistence  either 
wholly  or  chiefly  upon  farming.  High  fertilization  and  in- 
tensive cultivation  make  the  land  very  productive  and  the 
farmers  usually  have  enough  to  eat;  but  as  the  average 
farm  is  only  about  two  and  a  half  acres  and  the  average 
family  is  large,  the  daily  fare  is  not  abundant.  Meat  is 
seldom  eaten,  the  staple  fare  consisting  of  rice,  vegetables, 
and  an  occasional  fish.  Few  animals  can  be  kept  on  these 
tiny  plots.  Only  one  farmer  in  three  is  said  to  own  a  horse 
or  an  ox,  and  men,  women,  and  children  toil  early  and  late 
hi  doing  by  hand  what  an  American  farmer  does  by  machin- 
ery. "The  day-laborers  on  the  farm  receive  wages  ranging 
between  nine  and  fifteen  cents,  though  the  latter  have  risen 
more  than  100  per  cent  during  the  last  fifteen  years.  With 

307 


308  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

this  meagre  income  some  of  the  laborers  have  to  support 
their  aged  parents,  wives,  and  children.  The  tenants, 
whose  number  bears  the  ratio  of  about  two  to  one  to  that 
of  the  proprietors,  live  literally  from  hand  to  mouth  and 
cannot  always  afford  even  the  necessary  manure,  and  the 
proprietor's  profit  hardly  rises  above  5  per  cent,  while  the 
capital  he  employs  pays  an  interest  of  15  to  30  per  cent 
and  his  local  and  central  taxes  further  reduce  his  income."  x 
The  laboring  classes  in  the  larger  towns  are  considerably 
worse  off  than  in  Western  lands.  The  rapid  development 
of  manufacturing  has  brought  great  numbers  of  people  into 
the  cities  for  employment  in  the  mills  and  factories.  These 
working  people  are  herded  in  overcrowded  sections  and 
their  wages  are  so  small  that  many  of  them  cannot  secure 
suitable  food  and  healthful  surroundings.  Employees  in 
most  of  the  factories  toil  twelve  hours  a  day  and  sometimes 
sixteen.  Many  of  the  factories  are  poorly  ventilated  and 
without  safety  or  sanitary  conveniences.  Of  the  853,864 
operatives,  535,297  are  females.  Multitudes  are  children, 
60  per  cent  being  under  twenty  years  of  age,  and  8  per  cent 
being  little  girls.  Many  factories  hold  their  girls  and  young 
women  in  virtual  slavery,  compelling  them  to  live  within 
stockades  on  such  light  food  and  in  such  unsanitary  condi- 
tions that  tuberculosis  rages  among  them.  Official  reports 
show  that  "while  the  general  death-rate  from  tubercular 
diseases  is  about  10  per  cent,  the  death-rate  from  the  same 
cause  in  printing-works  and  type-foundries  is  49  per  cent, 
and  in  cotton-spinning  and  weaving  factories  35  per  cent. 
The  agents  who  seek  operatives  for  the  factories  pay  little 
attention  to  health  and,  in  competition  with  one  another, 
do  not  hesitate  to  employ  even  those  who  are  positively  ill. 
When  the  diseased  operatives  return  to  their  native  villages 
they  spread  germs  broadcast  among  healthy  people.'7  Of 
the  200,000  girls  who  enter  the  factories  each  year,  120,000, 
according  to  A.  M.  Pooley,  in  Japan  at  the  Cross  Roads, 
never  return  to  their  homes,  but  drift  from  one  factory  to 
another  till  they  are  broken  down  or  become  open  or  clan- 

1 K.  Asakawa,  The  Russo-Japanese  Conflict,  pp.  5-7. 


,     SOCIAL  AND  ECONOMIC  CONDITIONS  309 

destine  prostitutes;  while  of  the  80,000  who  do  go  back  to 
their  families  13,000  are  ill. 

Strenuous  efforts  have  been  made  by  enlightened  Japa- 
nese in  recent  years  to  bring  about  better  industrial  condi- 
tions, and  with  partial  success.  Some  manufacturers  are 
providing  for  the  welfare  of  their  employees  in  the  most 
approved  modern  way.  Some  good  laws  are  now  upon  the 
statute-books.  The  employment  of  children  under  the 
age  of  twelve  in  any  heavy  and  laborious  work  is  forbidden, 
and  also  the  compelling  of  boys  under  fifteen  and  women 
of  any  age  to  work  more  than  twelve  hours  a  day.  But 
the  struggle  for  existence  in  overcrowded  cities,  the  pres- 
sure of  competition,  the  eager  desire  for  profits,  the  ab- 
normal demands  for  increased  production  caused  by  the 
European  War,  have  thus  far  prevented  adequate  enforce- 
ment of  legal  requirements.  Western  lands  are  still  far 
from  perfect  in  this  respect;  but  the  condition  of  working 
people  in  Japan  is  undoubtedly  low  as  compared  with  that 
of  the  corresponding  classes  in  America.  Men  and  women, 
and  especially  boys  and  girls,  cannot  work  twelve  hours  a 
day,  seven  days  a  week,  on  poor  food,  in  overcrowded  quar- 
ters, and  amid  unsanitary  surroundings  without  serious 
physical,  intellectual  and  moral  deterioration.1 

Human  life  has  long  been  held  cheap  among  the  Japa- 
nese. Some  peoples  who  lightly  value  the  lives  of  others 
are  scrupulously  careful  of  their  own.  But  the  Japanese 
do  not  hesitate  to  sacrifice  their  lives  on  various  pretexts. 
I  have  discussed  in  another  chapter  the  military  significance 
of  this  fact,  but  we  may  note  it  here  among  the  social  phe- 
nomena of  the  nation.  Suicides  are  common  even  among 
the  young.  According  to  official  statistics,  in  a  recent  year 
241  youths  under  the  age  of  sixteen  committed  suicide, 
801  between  sixteen  and  twenty  years  of  age,  and  3,086 
between  twenty  and  thirty.  AJI  American  student  who 
fails  to  pass  his  examinations  never  thinks  of  killing  himself, 

1  Cf.  Report  on  Industrial  Conditions  of  Modern  Japan,  prepared  by  the 
Social  Welfare  Committee  of  the  Conference  of  Federated  Missions,  1916, 
and  Doctor  Sydney  L.  Gulick's  Working  Women  of  Japan. 


310  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

but  every  year  Japanese  students  end  their  lives  for  this 
reason.  One  young  man  of  nineteen  years  left  the  follow- 
ing lines: 

"  Alas !  having  missed  the  road  to  success,  I  go  a  sheep  into  the  night. 
The  days  of  a  man's  life  are  but  fifty  sad  years — the  end,  dust." 

A  favorite  place  for  suicides  is  the  beautiful  Kegon 
Waterfall  near  Nikko.  Doctor  Sydney  L.  Gulick  writes 
that  "a  brilliant  and  widely  known  university  graduate 
flung  himself  into  the  river  just  above  the  waterfall.  His 
battered  body  was  found  a  few  days  later  among  the  rocks 
six  hundred  feet  below.  He  left  behind  a  letter,  which  was 
published  throughout  the  land  and  was  in  substance  as 
follows :  '  I  have  studied  all  that  science  and  philosophy  have 
to  teach  about  the  problem  of  existence.  I  have  examined 
all  the  religions  for  their  answers  to  the  problem  of  human 
life.  Nowhere  have  I  found  anything  satisfactory.  I  now 
go  into  the  other  world  to  search  for  the  solution  myself.' 
Presently  another  youth  did  the  same  thing,  and  then 
another,  and  still  another.  Police  were  stationed  at  the 
head  of  the  waterfall  to  stop  the  tragedy,  but  without  com- 
plete success.  A  barricade  of  stout  posts  fastened  together 
by  iron  failed  to  stop  the  human  cataract  over  those  falls 
that  for  a  thousand  years  had  been  connected  with  the 
pessimistic  religious  traditions  of  the  land.  In  1912  no 
fewer  than  248  men  and  women  ended  their  lives  in  that 
tragic  way  at  that  single  spot.  How  many  had  ended  their 
lives  in  the  crater  of  Asama  no  records  can  show." 

Even  maternal  love  sometimes  fails  to  make  a  mother 
cling  to  her  child  when  she  believes  that  his  honor  is  in- 
volved, although  the  point  may  concern  only  a  school  prize. 
In  his  Life  of  Japan,  Mr.  Masuji  Miyakawa  tells  us  that  a 
Japanese  mother  would  want  her  son  to  commit  suicide 
because  he  had  failed  to  get  a  prize  at  school  and  another 
boy  had  received  it.  He  says  that  when  he  was  a  school- 
boy in  Tokyo,  only  six  years  old,  "his  most  faithful  school- 
mate received  a  medal  and  he  got  none;  his  dear  mother 


311 

then  told  him  he  had  better  commit  hari-kari,  which  even 
at  that  young  age  he  thought  strongly  of  doing." 

The  social  unrest  which  is  creating  such  a  ferment  in 
Western  countries  has  reached  Japan,  and  although  its 
manifestations  have  not  yet  appeared  on  a  large  scale, 
they  have  been  prominent  enough  to  indicate  that  a  sig- 
nificant movement  has  begun.  The  government  does  not 
permit  the  kind  of  labor-unions  with  which  America  is 
familiar,  but  the  principle  of  collective  bargaining  is  rapidly 
gaining  advocates.  The  Japanese  laborer  is  not  always  as 
docile  and  submissive  as  his  fathers  were.  The  Japan  Ad- 
vertiser reports  that  in  a  recent  year  there  were  strikes  in- 
volving 9,000  workmen,  but  that  in  the  following  year  there 
were  180  strikes  in  which  30,000  men  participated.  "In 
olden  times,"  said  Mr.  Nakashoji,  Minister  of  Agriculture 
and  Commerce,  "we  very  seldom  had  a  labor  question. 
Because  of  the  relations  between  lords  and  subjects,  sub- 
jects had  to  obey  their  lords.  Lately,  with  the  coming  in 
of  new  ideas,  disorder  has  arisen  here  and  there." * 

During  the  European  War  the  cost  of  living  rose  80  per 
cent  and,  as  in  other  lands,  the  profits  of  the  enormous  in- 
crease in  manufactures  and  commerce  were  very  unequally 
distributed.  While  some  men  accumulated  huge  fortunes, 
the  wage-earning  classes  found  that  the  prices  of  all  neces- 
saries of  life  went  up  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  gain  in 
their  incomes.  Wide-spread  discontent  resulted.  In  the 
summer  of  1918,  the  large  stores  of  food  which  the  War 
Department  felt  obliged  to  accumulate  for  the  Siberian  ex- 
pedition, and  the  hoarding  of  the  remaining  rice  by  greedy 
speculators  who  charged  exorbitant  prices,  caused  a  shortage 
of  this  staple  which  the  Japanese  deem  so  essential.  The 
victimized  people  were  not  so  submissive  as  they  would 
have  been  in  like  circumstances  a  generation  ago.  Riots 
broke  out  in  various  parts  of  the  country,  and  the  situation 
became  so  serious  that  the  government  was  forced  to  buy 
up  all  the  rice  in  storage  and  sell  it  to  the  people  at  reason- 
able prices. 

1  Address,  June  12,  1917. 


312  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

The  Yuai  Kai,  a  friendly  association  of  workers,  as  near 
a  labor-union  as  the  laws  permit,  was  founded  in  1912  and 
already  claims  more  than  30,000  members.  Its  President, 
Mr.  Suzukui,  visited  the  United  States  in  1916  and  attended 
the  meetings  of  the  California  State  Federation  of  Labor, 
the  International  Seamen's  Union  of  America,  and  the 
American  Federation  of  Labor,  where  he  was  received  as  a 
fraternal  delegate  from  Japan  and  brought  into  touch  with 
the  spirit  of  that  powerful  organization.  It  may  not  be 
long  before  the  working  men  of  Japan  will  secure  some  of 
the  reforms  which  their  brethren  in  Western  lands  have 
enforced. 

It  is  interesting  to  find  that  Socialism  has  also  made  its 
appearance  in  Japan.  Several  teachers  in  educational  in- 
stitutions, and  even  in  the  imperial  universities,  are  known 
to  entertain  socialistic  views.  Those  who  hold  moderate 
opinions  are  not  disturbed,  but  some  alarm  was  felt  when, 
in  1910,  a  band  of  men,  who  professed  to  be  Socialists  but 
who  were  more  nearly  anarchists,  were  discovered  to  be 
plotting  against  the  government.  Their  leader,  Kotoku, 
and  twenty-five  of  his  confederates  were  promptly  arrested 
and  given  short  shrift.  Libraries  were  searched  and  every 
Socialist  book  and  pamphlet  was  destroyed.  Unfortunately, 
three  or  four  of  the  plotters  claimed  to  be  Christians,  and 
for  a  time  the  public  was  disposed  to  regard  Christianity  as 
the  source  of  Socialism,  and  therefore  to  be  opposed  as  the 
foe  of  the  government,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  nearly  all 
of  the  criminals  were  not  Christians  and  that  Kotoku  was 
a  violent  hater  of  Christianity  and  the  author  of  a  book 
entitled  An  Argument  for  the  Effacement  of  Christ,  in  which 
he  bitterly  arraigned  the  religion  of  Jesus  as  a  superstitious 
fable  and  the  enemy  of  all  freedom.  The  excitement  stirred 
up  by  this  group  of  fanatics  soon  died  down,  but  the  au- 
thorities are  keeping  their  eye  on  the  socialistic  propaganda, 
of  which  Japan,  like  Europe  and  America,  has  not  seen 
the  end. 

It  is  gratifying  to  note  the  rapid  growth  of  humane  move- 
ments in  Japan.  A  Red  Cross  Society,  organized  in  a 


SOCIAL  AND  ECONOMIC  CONDITIONS  313 

small  way  in  1877,  now  enrolls  over  2,000,000  members, 
including  the  Emperor,  the  Empress,  and  many  of  their 
most  distinguished  subjects.  Its  hospitals,  physicians, 
nurses,  and  financial  resources  are  prepared  to  meet  almost 
any  emergency.  The  Japan  Society  for  the  Humane  Pro- 
tection of  Animals  finds  congenial  soil  in  a  land  where 
Buddhism,  at  least  in  theory,  opposes  the  taking  of  life. 
The  Prison  Association  of  Japan,  an  influential  society 
started  a  generation  ago  at  the  instigation  of  Doctor  John 
C.  Berry,  an  American  missionary,  has  given  much  study 
to  the  subject  of  prison  reform,  has  sent  intelligent  dele- 
gates to  the  meetings  of  the  International  Prison  Congresses, 
and  has  been  instrumental  in  abating  some  forms  of  cruel 
and  inhuman  punishments.  Societies  for  the  protection  of 
children  were  later  in  starting,  but  in  recent  years  large- 
hearted  Japanese  have  been  making  earnest  efforts  to 
ameliorate  the  condition  of  orphans  and  other  neglected 
waifs.  Efforts  for  the  blind  have  a  needy  field  in  a  coun- 
try where  their  number  is  141  for  every  100,000  of  the  popu- 
lation, a  proportion  nearly  double  that  in  America  and 
western  Europe.  Wide  is  the  opportunity  hi  many  direc- 
tions, but  the  humane  movement  in  Japan  is  well  under 
way  and  is  gaining  strength  and  momentum  every  year. 

Intemperance  is  a  more  prevalent  vice  in  Japan  than 
the  casual  visitor  realizes,  as  drinking  is  usually  done  in 
the  home  at  night  where  the  effects  are  quietly  slept  off 
before  the  next  day.  Drunkenness  is  therefore  less  con- 
spicuous than  in  Western  lands,  where  a  greater  proportion 
of  the  drinking  is  done  in  public  saloons  and  other  places 
outside  of  the  home  and  an  intoxicated  man  reels  out  on 
the  street.  Buddhism  is  a  prohibition  religion  hi  theory, 
but  its  adherents  seldom  practise  it  in  Japan.  While  beer 
has  become  popular,  sake  (rice  liquor)  is  the  national  bever- 
age. One  hundred  and  sixty  million  gallons  are  made  in 
an  average  year,  and  the  revenue  tax  is  a  prolific  source  of 
income  to  the  government.  Protest  against  this  evil  is 
not  wanting.  A  temperance  society  was  started  as  early  as 
1875.  There  are  now  over  two  hundred  such  societies,  and 


314  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

their  membership  is  rapidly  growing.  This  cause  has  a 
powerful  advocate  in  the  Honorable  Sho  Nemoto,  a  member 
of  the  Imperial  Diet. 

The  position  of  woman  is  undergoing  change  like  almost 
everything  else  in  Japan.  Happy  homes,  love  between 
husbands  and  wives,  respect  for  mothers,  and  tender  care 
of  children  have  long  existed  in  Japan.  "Most  entertain- 
ing things  are  written  by  foreigners  about  marriage  forced 
upon  unwilling  brides,  and  even  of  marriages  by  purchase," 
keenly  observes  Professor  Inazo  Nitobe.  "I  may  just  as 
truly  amuse  and  instruct  my  own  people  with  stories  about 
ambitious  American  parents  practically  selling  their  daugh- 
ters to  European  nobles,  or  of  the  sorrows  of  'mariage  de 
convenance'  in  Europe.  There  are  certainly  more  oppor- 
tunities for  American  girls  to  marry  the  men  whom  they 
most  love,  and,  vice  versa,  for  men  to  take  to  wife  girls 
whom  they  like  best;  but  I  doubt  whether  the  proportion 
of  happy  unions  is  very  different  in  the  two  countries."1 

The  general  fact  remains,  however,  that  the  status  of 
Japanese  women  as  a  class  has  always  been  and  still  is  be- 
low that  of  men.  They  were  not  considered  by  men,  and 
they  did  not  consider  themselves,  as  equals  of  the  other 
sex.  In  a  widely  circulated  volume  entitled  Great  Learning 
for  Women,  it  is  said  that  "the  five  worst  maladies  that 
affect  the  female  mind  are  indocility,  discontent,  slander, 
jealousy,  and  silliness.  Without  doubt  these  five  maladies 
affect  seven  or  eight  out  of  every  ten  women."  As  late  as 
1871  the  Emperor  said:  "Japanese  women  are  without  un- 
derstanding." The  popular  notion  was  that  of  the  Con- 
fucian maxim :  "  It  is  no  undesirable  thing  for  a  wife  to  be 
stupid,  whereas  a  wise  woman  is  more  likely  to  be  a  curse 
in  a  family  than  a  blessing."  Daughters  were  seldom  de- 
sired and,  especially  among  the  lower  classes,  were  given 
scant  consideration  and  often  sold  to  brothel-keepers,  or 
encouraged  to  go  there  of  themselves. 

In  a  striking  article  in  the  Shin  Nihon  for  August,  1917, 
Marquis  Okuma  wrote:  "In  early  days,  the  intercourse  of 

1  The  Japanese  Nation,  p.  163. 


SOCIAL  AND  ECONOMIC  CONDITIONS  315 

men  and  women  was  little  above  the  animals.  .  .  .  Then 
came  Christianity  to  show  the  higher  path  and  to  give 
clear,  strict  teaching  about  one  husband  and  one  wife,  which 
has  gradually  influenced  the  world.  ...  In  feudal  times 
women  were  hardly  regarded  as  human  beings  of  the  same 
kind  as  men  and  were  too  severely  restricted.  Women 
ought  to  be  well  educated,  but  it  was  thought  bad  for  them 
to  know  much,  so  they  were  instructed  in  little  except  the 
duty  of  submission.  They  were  supposed  to  exist  only  for 
the  pleasure  and  use  of  men,  who  laid  down  the  rules  which 
suited  themselves.  The  time  has  come  when  those  old  ways 
will  no  longer  serve  us.  ...  Women  are  demanding  social 
and  political  equality  with  men.  Now,  if  this  demand  arises 
naturally  from  circumstances  or  necessity,  well  and  good; 
but  if  it  only  comes  from  jealousy  of  men,  or  the  ambition 
to  be  like  them,  or  such  shallow  motives,  it  has  no  value 
at  all.  If  women  obtain  powers  with  only  these  uncentred 
ideas,  and  enter  freely  into  many  activities,  it  is  impossible 
to  say  how  much  harm  may  be  done.  If  women  imitate 
the  reckless  behavior  of  men,  the  world,  dark  enough  al- 
ready, will  become  darker  still.  .  .  .  This  women's  ques- 
tion is  not  one  which  can  be  neglected  with  impunity.  It 
is  chattered  about  carelessly  by  young  people;  but  it  is 
plain  that  sooner  or  later  it  will  become  a  problem  of  burn- 
ing importance  in  intimate  connection  with  our  practical  life." 
Missionaries  from  the  West  taught  the  Christian  ideas 
of  the  equality  of  the  sexes,  and  gave  an  object-lesson  in  the 
treatment  of  their  own  wives  and  daughters  which  Japanese 
women  did  not  fail  to  observe.  Mission  schools  for  girls 
were  opened.  Their  attendance  was  small  at  first,  but  in 
time  they  became  popular.  A  pioneer  in  this  work  for  the 
Christian  education  of  women  was  Miss  Julia  N.  Crosby  of 
the  Woman's  Union  Missionary  Society  of  America,  who, 
with  Mrs.  Louise  H.  Pierson  and  Mrs.  Samuel  Pruyn, 
founded  a  boarding-school  for  girls  in  Yokohama  in  1870. 
The  Emperor  fittingly  recognized  her  inestimable  services 
to  Japan  by  conferring  upon  her  in  1917  the  decoration  of 
the  blue  ribbon. 


316  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

To-day,  many  thousands  of  girls  are  being  educated  in 
both  government  and  private  schools,  and  highly  educated 
women  are  to  be  found  in  all  the  leading  cities  and  in  many 
of  the  smaller  towns.  The  wives  of  Japanese  diplomatic 
and  consular  officials  and  of  prominent  business  men  in 
Europe  and  America  are  famous  for  their  cultivated  grace 
of  manner.  A  social  function  under  the  auspices  of  the 
Japan  Society  of  New  York  brings  together  as  charming 
and  intelligent  a  company  of  Japanese  women  as  one  could 
meet  anywhere,  and  they  do  not  suffer  in  comparison  with 
their  American  sisters. 

The  marriage  tie  is  more  frequently  broken  in  Japan  than 
in  any  country  of  Europe  or  America.  This  is  saying  a 
good  deal,  for  the  breaking  up  of  homes  in  the  United  States 
is  disgracefully  common.  Statistics  of  divorce,  compiled 
by  Professor  W.  B.  Bailey  of  Yale  University  for  the  eleven 
leading  nations,  show  that  the  proportion  of  divorces  is 
three  times  higher  in  Japan  than  in  the  next  highest  coun- 
try, the  United  States,  the  ratio  being  215  per  100,000  of 
the  population  in  Japan,  to  73  in  the  United  States.  Pro- 
fessor Inazo  Nitobe,  while  frankly  admitting  that  "the 
number  of  divorces  is  appalling  and  a  disgrace  to  our  family 
system,"  adds:  "I  have  purposely  said  that  this  is  a  dis- 
grace to  our  family  system,  avoiding  the  term  marriage 
system;  for  in  a  large  proportion  of  our  divorces  the  cause 
is  to  be  found  not  in  the  rupture  of  conjugal  relations,  but 
hi  the  custom  of  a  married  son  living  under  the  same  roof 
with  his  parents;  in  short,  hi  the  universally  notorious  rela- 
tionship between  a  wife  and  a  mother-in-law!  It  argues 
a  marvellous  amount  of  fortitude  and  sweetness  in  the 
women  of  Japan  that  they  bear  the  burden  of  wifehood  and 
motherhood  under  conditions  so  exacting."1 

Certain  it  is  that  the  women  of  Japan  are  bestirring  them- 
selves. Like  their  sisters  in  Western  lands,  some  of  them 
are  entering  business,  journalism,  medicine,  nursing,  and 
philanthropy.  Stenography,  typewriting,  and  telephoning 
are  largely  in  their  hands.  Prominent  women  are  active  in 

1  The  Japanese  Nation,  p.  164. 


SOCIAL  AND  ECONOMIC  CONDITIONS  317 

social  and  temperance  reform.  Madame  Yajima  is  known 
all  over  Japan  for  her  able  leadership  in  these  reforms. 
Whether  the  enlightened  and  enfranchised  women  of  the 
new  era,  in  both  the  East  and  the  West,  will  acquiesce  in 
the  kind  of  treatment  to  which  their  mothers  and  grand- 
mothers more  or  less  meekly  yielded  remains  to  be  seen. 
I  suspect  that  the  male  "lords  of  creation"  will  hereafter 
be  obliged  to  recognize  the  fact  that  the  days  of  their  un- 
challenged domination  are  about  over. 


CHAPTER   XX 
EDUCATION  IN  JAPAN 

JAPAN  has  had  schools  and  books  from  a  remote  antiquity. 
The  first  impetus  to  intellectual  culture  came  from  China, 
whose  literature  and  civilization  antedated  those  of  Japan 
by  many  centuries.  The  earliest  Chinese  books  to  reach 
Japan  are  supposed  to  have  arrived  284  A.  D.  The  earliest 
extant  Japanese  book  appeared  in  Chinese  characters  in 
the  second  decade  of  the  eighth  century.  It  is  probable 
that  many  books  preceded  it  that  long  since  disappeared. 
This  particular  book,  the  Kojiki,  is  a  "Record  of  Ancient 
Happenings"  and  gives  an  alleged  history  of  Japan  from 
"the  beginning,"  but  one  which  mingles  fact,  tradition, 
myth,  and  legend  in  hopeless  confusion.  The  art  of  printing 
by  movable  wooden-block  types,  which  also  was  introduced 
from  China  in  the  eighth  century,  enabled  the  Japanese  to 
multiply  their  own  books,  and  the  ninth,  tenth,  and  eleventh 
centuries  were  prolific  in  literature. 

The  period  of  internecine  strife  between  rival  clans  made 
the  following  centuries  intellectually  barren;  but  with  the 
"Great  Peace"  which  began  in  the  seventeenth  century, 
the  minds  of  thoughtful  men  again  turned  to  learning  and 
books  and  pamphlets  became  numerous.  Most  of  them 
bore  the  unmistakable  stamp  of  Chinese  influence,  being 
either  Chinese  classics  or  Japanese  books  that  derived  their 
thought  and  style  in  large  measure  from  them.  With  the 
exception  of  a  few  sporadic  books,  the  literature  of  Europe 
and  America  did  not  appear  in  Japan  until  the  modern  era 
which  opened  with  the  arrival  of  Commodore  Perry  in  1853. 
Since  then,  there  has  been  a  remarkable  quickening  and 
broadening  of  intellectual  life.  To-day,  Japan  has  printing- 
presses  of  the  latest  type,  and  libraries  well  stocked  with  the 
world's  best  volumes  on  history  and  art,  science  and  political 

318 


EDUCATION  IN  JAPAN  319 

economy,  philosophy  and  religion.  Books  in  Japanese  and 
English  are  published  and  imported  in  great  quantities. 
Newspapers  and  magazines  are  numerous  and  widely  read, 
and  there  are  scholars  and  authors  of  international  fame. 

The  first  school  in  Japan  of  which  there  is  any  record 
was  founded  664  A.  D.  The  educational  system  which  fol- 
lowed, if  it  could  be  called  educational,  was  of  the  familiar 
type  in  eastern  Asia  prior  to  the  coming  of  missionaries 
from  the  West — a  mere  memorizing  of  ancient  classics  and 
the  composition  of  rhetorical  essays  about  them.  Educa- 
tion in  the  modern  sense  was  begun  by  the  missionaries  who 
arrived  in  1859.  They  founded  the  first  schools  which  in- 
troduced Western  learning  into  Japan.  Imperfect  though 
they  were  from  the  view-point  of  present-day  pedagogical 
standards,  they  were  a  vast  improvement  upon  anything 
that  Japan  had  hitherto  known. 

The  awakening  of  the  Japanese  mind  in  the  new  era 
resulted  not  only  in  political  and  industrial  changes  but  in 
a  new  intellectual  life  which  soon  demanded  a  national 
system  of  education.  The  fifth  of  the  five  articles  of  the 
oath  promulgated  by  the  Emperor,  April  6,  1868,  declared : 
"Knowledge  shall  be  sought  for  throughout  the  world,  so 
that  the  welfare  of  the  Empire  may  be  promulgated." 

The  deputation  which  sailed  from  Japan  in  1871  to  study 
the  institutions  and  methods  of  Western  nations  included 
two  men,  Mr.  Kido  and  Mr.  Okubo,  who  gave  special  at- 
tention to  education.  They  were  deeply  impressed  by  the 
general  diffusion  of  intelligence  among  the  people  of  America, 
and  they  speedily  came  to  the  conclusion  expressed  by  Mr. 
Okubo  in  the  words:  "We  must  first  educate  leaders  and 
the  rest  will  follow."  Mr.  Kido  added:  "We  must  educate 
the  masses,  for  unless  the  people  are  trained  they  cannot 
follow  their  leaders,  or,  if  they  follow,  it  will  never  do  for 
them  to  follow  blindly." 

A  Department  of  Education  was  established  and  the  first 
educational  regulations  were  issued  in  September,  1872. 
The  preamble  of  this  historic  document  declared  that 
"the  cultivation  of  morals,  the  improvement  of  intellect, 


320  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

and  proficiency  in  arts  cannot  be  attained  except  through 
learning.  This  is  the  reason  why  schools  are  established." 

The  Japanese  cordially  acknowledge  their  indebtedness 
to  the  United  States  for  guidance  in  educational  matters. 
Doctor  K.  Ibuka,  President  of  the  Meiji  Gakuin,  Tokyo, 
says  that  "when  Japan  reached  out  after  Western  ideas,  she 
copied  her  navy  from  Great  Britain,  her  army  from  France, 
her  medical  science  from  Germany,  and  her  educational  sys- 
tem from  America."  The  constructive  genius  whose  name 
will  always  have  an  honored  place  in  the  history  of  Japan's 
educational  development  was  the  American,  David  Murray, 
Ph.D.,  LL.D.,  who  was  the  adviser  of  the  government 
Department  of  Education  from  1873  to  1879.  He  was  the 
real  master  builder  of  Japan's  modern  system  of  education. 
An  extensive  programme  was  mapped  out,  beginning  with 
primary  schools  and  culminating  in  the  Imperial  University 
in  the  capital.  Several  trained  educators  from  Western 
lands  were  invited  to  fill  important  professorships  until  the 
new  institutions  were  able  to  turn  out  highly  qualified  men 
of  their  own.  The  Emperor  declared :  "  It  is  intended  that 
henceforth  education  shall  be  so  devised  that  there  may 
not  be  a  village  with  an  ignorant  family  or  a  family  with  an 
ignorant  member." 

Education  in  Japan  is  not  left  so  largely  to  local  control 
as  in  America.  It  is  administered  by  the  national  govern- 
ment through  a  Department  of  Education,  which  is  sub- 
divided into  three  bureaus:  General  Education,  Special 
Education,  and  Religions.  A  few  institutions,  like  the 
Peers'  School,  the  Nautical  School,  the  Post  and  Telegraph 
School,  and  the  military  and  naval  colleges,  are  related  to 
other  departments  of  the  government,  but  they  are  none 
the  less  under  the  supervision  of  the  authorities. 

The  basis  of  instruction  in  morals  is  the  following  imperial 
rescript  of  October  30, 1890,  which  is  posted  in  every  school 
and  is  certainly  admirable  as  far  as  it  goes: 

"Know  Ye,  Our  Subjects:  Our  Imperial  Ancestors  have  founded 
our  Empire  on  a  basis  broad  and  everlasting,  and  have  deeply  and 


EDUCATION  IN  JAPAN  321 

firmly  implanted  virtue.  Our  subjects,  ever  united  in  loyalty  and 
filial  piety,  have  from  generation  to  generation  illustrated  the  beauty 
thereof.  This  is  the  glory  and  fundamental  character  of  our  Empire, 
and  herein  also  lies  the  source  of  our  education.  Ye,  our  subjects, 
be  filial  to  your  parents,  affectionate  to  your  brothers  and  sisters;  as 
husbands  and  wives,  be  harmonious;  as  friends,  true;  bear  yourselves 
in  modesty  and  moderation;  extend  your  benevolence  to  all;  pursue 
learning  and  cultivate  the  arts  and  thereby  develop  intellectual 
faculties  and  perfect  moral  powers;  furthermore,  advance  public 
good  and  promote  common  interests;  always  respect  the  Constitution 
and  observe  the  laws;  should  emergency  arise,  offer  yourselves  cou- 
rageously to  the  State  and  thus  guard  and  maintain  the  prosperity  of 
our  Imperial  Throne  coeval  with  heaven  and  earth.  So  shall  ye  not 
only  be  our  good  and  faithful  subjects  but  render  illustrious  the  best 
traditions  of  your  forefathers.  The  way  here  set  forth  is  indeed  the 
teaching  bequeathed  by  our  Imperial  Ancestors  to  be  observed  alike 
by  their  descendants  and  the  subjects,  infallible  for  all  ages  and  true 
in  all  places.  It  is  our  wish  to  take  it  to  heart  in  all  reverence,  in 
common  with  you  our  subjects,  that  we  may  all  thus  attain  to  the 
same  virtue." 

All  public  schools  are  forbidden  to  teach  religion,  the 
governmental  educational  policy  being  one  of  neutrality  be- 
tween the  various  religious  faiths  of  the  empire.  This  neu- 
trality, however,  is  often  in  theory  rather  than  in  fact, 
since  the  government  does  not  consider  Shinto  ceremonies 
religious,  as  nearly  everybody  else  does,  and  since  the  large 
preponderance  of  Buddhist  and  anti-Christian  teachers 
naturally  creates  an  atmosphere  unfavorable  to  Christi- 
anity and  colors  the  instruction  in  many  departments, 
particularly  those  in  ethics,  science,  and  philosophy.  More- 
over, some  of  the  required  ceremonies,  which  the  govern- 
ment considers  patriotic  rather  than  religious,  are  deemed 
religious  hi  fact  not  only  by  foreigners  but  by  many  Chris- 
tian Japanese;  as,  for  example,  the  worship  of  the  picture 
of  the  Emperor,  and  the  acts  of  veneration  to  the  spirits  of 
the  imperial  ancestors.  Painful  experience  has  taught  the 
Christians  of  Japan  that  they  must  maintain  their  own 
schools  and  colleges  if  they  are  to  secure  educated  leaders 
for  their  churches.  Private  schools  are  permitted  to  exist 
and  may  teach  religion;  but  their  curricula  must  be  ap- 


322  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

proved  by  the  Department  of  Education,  which  demands 
satisfactory  courses,  text-books,  methods,  and  qualified 
teachers  under  penalty  of  exclusion  of  their  graduates  from 
the  government  universities  and  technical  schools.  As  the 
diplomas  of  these  universities  and  technical  schools  are 
virtually  essential  to  civil,  military,  or  naval  preferment,  the 
consequences  of  failure  to  meet  the  government  require- 
ments are  not  light. 

The  latest  official  reports  of  the  public  schools  list  25,673 
elementary  schools,  with  158,601  teachers  and  7;037,430 
pupils;  317  middle  schools  with  6,220  teachers  and  128,- 
973  pupils;  299  high  schools  with  3,818  teachers  and  71,280 
pupils;  4  imperial  universities  with  792  professors  and  in- 
structors and  8,946  students;  and  792  technical  schools  with 
7,505  teachers  and  428,732  students.  Including  some  mis- 
cellaneous schools  not  classified  under  these  headings,  the 
total  number  of  schools  is  36,776  with  188,967  teachers,  and 
7,893,719  pupils.  One  million  three  hundred  and  twenty- 
two  thousand  nine  hundred  and  ninety-one  were  graduated 
in  a  recent  year.  Ninety-eight  per  cent  of  the  boys  of  school 
age  are  enrolled,  and  96  per  cent  of  the  girls.  The  average 
daily  attendance  is  92  per  cent — the  highest  record  of  any 
country  in  the  world.  Russia  has  only  25  per  cent  of  her 
children  of  school  age  enrolled  in  schools.  With  less  than 
one-third  of  Russia's  population,  Japan  has  a  larger  actual 
as  well  as  relative  school  attendance  and  spends  four  times 
as  much  money  on  public  education.  The  leading  institu- 
tion, the  Imperial  University  in  Tokyo,  is  one  of  the  best 
equipped  universities  in  the  world,  with  every  facility  in 
buildings,  laboratories,  and  libraries,  and  with  a  faculty 
which  includes  some  men  of  international  reputation.  The 
largest  of  the  private  institutions  is  the  famous  Waseda 
University,  also  in  Tokyo,  founded  by  Marquis  Okuma, 
but  of  course  conducted  in  full  conformity  with  the  stand- 
ards of  the  government,  of  which  he  was  long  such  an  in- 
fluential member. 

I  visited  a  number  of  the  public  schools  and  was  very 
favorably  impressed.  Discipline  is  about  perfect,  as  might 


EDUCATION  IN  JAPAN  323 

be  expected,  for  teachers  are  regarded  as  virtually  officials 
of  the  government,  and  the  Japanese  by  temperament  and 
hereditary  training  are  obedient  to  authority.  This  may 
account,  in  some  degree  at  least,  for  the  high  records  in  at- 
tendance, punctuality,  and  deportment.  But  Japanese 
schools  are  also  notable  for  the  quickness  with  which  the 
pupils  learn  their  lessons.  Wherever  I  went  I  found  hand- 
some, commodious,  well-equipped  school-buildings.  In  one 
school  I  visited  in  Kyoto,  1,600  pupils  were  enrolled,  the 
ages  being  from  eleven  to  fifteen.  The  grounds  and  build- 
ings were  so  extensive  that  there  was  no  undue  crowding. 
The  order  was  excellent,  and  the  apparatus  as  complete  as 
in  any  public  school  I  have  seen  in  America. 

My  visit  to  the  public  schools  in  Kanazawa  occurred  on  a 
raw  day  in  early  spring,  when  I  was  glad  to  wear  my^heavy 
clothing;  but  most  of  the  children  were  bare-footed,  and  the 
teachers  told  me  that  the  boys  and  girls  often  came  to 
school  through  the  winter  snow  without  footwear.  This 
is  not  to  be  wholly  attributed  to  a  desire  for  learning,  as 
the  teacher  also  said  that  the  children  were  eager  to  play 
in  the  snow.  Japanese  children  are  not  accustomed  to 
protecting  themselves  against  the  cold  as  we  do;  but  the 
striking  thing  was  that  with  insufficient  clothing  and  in 
poorly  heated  rooms  they  sat  so  quietly  at  their  lessons 
during  the  long  hours  of  study. 

Japanese  school  children  have  a  harder  time  in  getting 
an  education  than  the  children  in  other  lands.  Japanese 
youths  are  so  ambitious  to  obtain  the  education  that  opens 
the  way  for  preferment  in  life  that  the  government  has  not 
yet  been  able  to  provide  sufficient  buildings,  equipment, 
and  teachers  to  accommodate  the  throngs  of  applicants. 
Partly  because  this  fact  compels  selection  and  partly  be- 
cause the  government  insists  upon  a  high  standard,  the 
examinations  are  made  very  severe.  Doctor  Nitobe  says 
that  the  number  of  candidates  for  admission  to  the  freshman 
class  of  the  college  in  Tokyo  is  usually  seven  or  eight  times 
the  number  that  can  be  received.  He  adds:  "It  is  a  very 
touching  sight  to  watch  some  2,000  boys,  the  pick  of  our 


324  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

youth  from  all  parts  of  the  empire,  flocking  to  the  college 
for  examination — to  watch  them  at  their  heavy  task,  all 
the  time  knowing  that  seven  out  of  every  eight  will  be  dis- 
appointed. Those  who  fail  one  year  can  try  again;  a 
great  many  do  try  three  or  four  times,  and  in  exceptional 
cases  seven  or  eight  times,  one  instance  of  perseverance 
being  on  record  where  success  crowned  the  fourteenth  at- 
tempt." 

The  task  of  the  Japanese  school  children  is  seriously  in- 
tensified by  the  nature  of  the  written  language.  When 
Japan  received  her  civilization,  religion,  and  learning  from 
China,  she  received  with  them  the  Chinese  character.  The 
Japanese  gave  their  own  pronunciation  to  the  Chinese 
ideographs,  so  that  the  spoken  language  became  quite  dis- 
tinct from  the  Chinese,  but  the  written  language  is  a  curious 
mixture  of  Chinese  and  Japanese  elements.  Professor 
Tanakadate,  of  the  Imperial  University  of  Tokyo,  says: 
"The  Japanese  student  must  learn  the  language  and  the 
method  of  its  representation  in  a  system  which  is  foreign 
to  the  nature  of  the  language.  The  number  of  these  Chi- 
nese characters  amounts  to  over  50,000,  of  which  about 
3,000  are  used  in  daily  Me.  Each  of  these  characters  has 
two  or  three,  sometimes  five  or  six,  different  meanings,  so 
that  the  learning  of  3,000  amounts  really  to  that  of  more 
than  10,000." 

The  result,  as  frankly  stated  hi  Marquis  Okuma's  Fifty 
Years  of  New  Japan,  is  that  "Japanese  students  to-day  are 
attempting  what  is  only  possible  to  the  strongest  and  clever- 
est of  them,  that  is  to  say,  two  or  three  in  every  hundred. 
They  are  trying  to  learn  their  own  language,  which  is  in 
reality  two  languages,  blended  or  confused  the  one  with  the 
other,  according  to  the  point  of  view,  while  attempting  to 
learn  English  and  German,  and  in  addition  studying  tech- 
nical subjects  like  law,  medicine,  engineering  or  science." 
As  far  back  as  the  year  809,  a  priest,  Kobo  Daishi,  devised 
a  syllabary  of  five  letters,  and  various  attempts  at  simpli- 
fication have  been  made  since.  Modern  authorities  tried 
some  years  ago  to  lessen  the  confusion  by  limiting  the  num- 


EDUCATION  IN  JAPAN  325 

her  of  Chinese  characters  to  be  taught  in  the  lower  schools 
to  twelve  hundred.  As  this  was  considered  almost  revo- 
lutionary, a  virtual  discarding  of  Chinese  classics  in  favor 
of  more  modern  literature,  a  foreigner  can  but  dimly  imagine 
the  labors  of  the  Japanese  boy  under  the  old  system.  It  is 
more  difficult  to  limit  the  use  of  Chinese  in  the  higher  in- 
stitutions, for  many  of  the  modern  scientific  and  philosophi- 
cal terms,  while  not  easy  to  translate  at  all,  can  now  be  better 
expressed  in  Chinese  characters  than  in  vernacular  Japa- 
nese. The  demand  for  the  adoption  of  the  Roman  alphabet 
is  steadily  gaining  ground  in  Japan  as  it  is  in  China,  and 
has  the  powerful  backing  of  many  of  Japan's  leading  edu- 
cators, including,  besides  those  already  mentioned,  Baron 
Kikuchi,  formerly  president  of  the  Peers'  School  and  the 
Imperial  University  and  Minister  of  Education  in  the  Im- 
perial Cabinet.  He  says  that  the  change  to  Roman  letters 
must  come,  although  it  will  come  very  slowly  since  long 
established  usage  is  to  be  overcome. 

Under  present  conditions  the  strain  upon  students  is 
heavy  and  prolonged.  The  combination  of  severe  examina- 
tions and  a  cumbersome  language  constitute  formidable 
handicaps.  University  professors  declare  that  many  stu- 
dents break  down  during  their  course;  that  those  who  do 
get  through  "require  six  or  eight  years  longer  to  acquire  a 
university  education  than  in  other  countries,"  and  that 
"the  number  of  students  who  reach  the  age  of  thirty  by  the 
time  they  have  finished  their  university  course  is  very 
large." 

An  imperial  rescript,  issued  September  20,  1917,  an- 
nounced that  "We,  in  view  of  the  situation  at  home  and 
abroad,  and  in  consideration  of  the  future  of  the  Empire, 
have  thought  it  advisable  to  organize  an  educational  com- 
mittee in  the  Cabinet,  empowering  it  to  deliberate  on  edu- 
cational affairs  in  Japan,  so  that  progress  of  education  may 
be  attained.  We  hereby  approve  the  organic  regulations 
of  the  Extraordinary  Educational  Conference  and  order 
them  to  be  published."  This  committee  went  vigorously 
to  work  under  the  chairmanship  of  Viscount  T.  Hirata, 


326  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

formerly  Minister  of  Home  Affairs,  and  Baron  Y.  Kubota, 
formerly  Minister  of  Education,  as  vice-chairman,  and  the 
whole  educational  system  of  the  country  was  carefully 
studied  with  a  view  to  ascertaining  what  improvements 
could  be  made.  It  will  be  noted,  therefore,  that  the  Japa- 
nese are  thoroughly  modern  and  progressive  in  then*  edu- 
cational ambitions.  They  want  the  best  methods  and  they 
are  sparing  no  effort  to  develop  them. 

Speaking  broadly,  the  Asiatic  mind  is  more  imitative  and 
less  constructive  than  the  mind  of  the  Anglo-Saxon.  It 
commits  a  lesson  to  memory  in  school  more  easily,  but  it  is 
less  resourceful  and  energetic  in  the  practical  duties  of  life. 
Observers  have  long  noted  that  the  East  Indian  youth,  who 
easily  outstrips  his  duller  English  schoolmate  in  the  class- 
room, is  likely  to  be  the  latter's  clerk  ten  years  after  gradua- 
tion, not  merely  because  of  his  race  but  because  of  his  com- 
parative lack  of  constructive  ability  and  aggressiveness. 
He  is  better  fitted  to  copy  than  to  create,  to  do  something 
that  has  been  marked  out  for  him  than  to  mark  out  some- 
thing for  himself.  There  are,  of  course,  many  exceptions 
to  this.  Some  Asiatics  are  born  leaders,  as  both  ancient 
and  modern  history  clearly  shows;  and  many  Anglo-Saxons 
are  content  to  be  followers.  Making  all  due  allowance,  how- 
ever, for  exceptions,  the  generalization  holds,  although  the 
proportion  of  exceptions  is  larger  in  Japan  than  in  China 
and  Korea.  Imitation  is  natural  hi  such  circumstances, 
since  the  first  task  of  an  awakened  people  is  to  catch  up  with 
the  peoples  who  have  gone  further.  It  is  not  surprising, 
therefore,  that  Japan  as  a  whole  is  utilizing  the  inventions 
and  discoveries  of  Western  nations  rather  than  making  its 
own. 

The  Japanese,  however,  are  catching  up  with  extraordi- 
nary rapidity.  Indeed  in  some  directions  they  are  now  fully 
abreast  of  Western  nations.  They  have  already  made 
some  additions  to  the  stock  of  the  world's  knowledge  and 
appliances,  and  they  will  undoubtedly  make  more  as  a 
larger  number  of  their  capable  men  take  their  positions  in 
the  front  rank  of  the  progressive  movements  of  modem 


EDUCATION  IN  JAPAN  327 

civilization.  Some  of  the  ablest  statesmen,  generals,  ad- 
mirals and  professional  and  business  men  of  the  modern 
world  are  Japanese,  and  almost  every  year  sees  new  figures 
of  commanding  proportions.  Modern  Japan  has  educators, 
authors  and  lecturers  who  are  widely  and  favorably  known 
outside  of  their  own  land,  and  she  can  point  with  just 
pride  to  specialists  of  recognized  standing  in  the  field  of 
scientific  research  and  discovery. 


CHAPTER  XXI 
BUDDHISM  AND  SHINTOISM  IN  JAPAN 

BUDDHISM  entered  Japan  from  Korea  552  A.  D.  The 
new  faith  encountered  opposition  and  spread  slowly,  but 
the  Korean  missionaries  were  persistent.  By  684  a  cabinet 
minister  gave  Buddhism  distinction  by  building  a  chapel, 
appointing  two  Korean  priests  to  minister  in  it,  and  encour- 
aging his  daughter  to  become  a  nun.  After  that  Buddhism 
rapidly  gained  headway  until  it  became  the  dominant  re- 
ligion of  the  country.  As  in  China,  it  did  not  prevail  in  a 
pure  form,  but  was  mingled  with  Confucian  ancestor-wor- 
ship and  with  a  variety  of  beliefs  and  practices,  many  of 
them  animistic,  which  made  it  a  queer  jumble  of  miscellane- 
ous odds  and  ends  of  religious  beliefs  and  customs.  In 
reply  to  a  question  from  a  contributor,  the  editor  of  the 
Rinri  Koenshu  said:  "Present-day  Buddhism  in  Japan  is 
very  complex,  and  it  is  difficult  to  say  in  a  word  what  its 
characteristics  are."  l 

To  the  eye  of  a  visitor  Buddhism  hi  Japan  appears  strong. 
Temples  are  conspicuously  in  evidence.  There  are  said  to 
be  71,730  of  them,  and  some  are  noble  in  proportions  and 
elaborate  in  ceremonies.  Fifty-three  thousand  two  hundred 
and  sixty-eight  priests  are  connected  with  these  temples. 
Many  others  are  engaged  in  teaching,  preaching,  and  other 
duties.  Nuns  are  also  numerous.  Hie  total  number  of 
priests  and  nuns  is  placed  at  180,129 — a  great  establishment 
indeed.  Statues  of  Buddha  are  innumerable — statues  sit- 
ting and  reclining,  statues  of  wood  and  iron  and  stone  and 
marble  and  bronze  and  alabaster,  and  of  every  conceivable 
size  from  tiny  images  that  can  be  put  in  a  vest  pocket  to 


1  July,  1916, 
328 


BUDDHISM  AND  SHINTOISM  IN  JAPAN          329 

the  colossal  figure  at  Kamakura,  made  in  the  year  1252, 
fifty  feet  in  height,  body  of  bronze  and  eyes  of  gold — 

"A  statue  solid-set 
And  moulded  in  colossal  calm." 

In  the  "dim  religious  light"  of  the  larger  temples  these 
huge  figures  (one  I  saw  was  145  feet  long  and  overlaid  with 
thin  sheets  of  pure  gold),  look  down  upon  the  worshipper 
with  a  solemn,  majestic  impassiveness,  a  timeless,  unmoved 
calm  which  impresses  even  a  Western  traveller,  and  help  him 
to  understand  in  some  measure  the  awe  which  these  vast 
statues  excite  in  the  minds  of  the  people. 

Nara,  with  its  spacious  park  and  venerable  trees  and  pic- 
turesque temple  and  huge  Buddha,  so  impressed  Phillips 
Brooks  that  he  wrote:  "No  one  of  all  the  world's  sacred 
places  has  so  stirred  my  soul  as  has  Nara." 

But  a  religion  is  supposed  to  be  a  moral  force.  Is  Budd- 
hism one?  Whatever  influence  in  purifying  conduct  it 
may  ever  have  had  finally  ceased  almost  wholly.  While 
it  retained  its  temples  and  priests  and  external  pomp,  it 
became  virtually  dead  from  the  view-point  of  vital  faith  and 
regenerative  power.  How  widely  modern  Buddhism  sepa- 
rates religion  and  conduct  painfully  appears  in  the  attitude 
of  its  priests  toward  immorality.  There  are  undoubtedly 
pure  priests,  and  it  would  be  grossly  unjust  to  make  an  in- 
discriminate charge  of  impurity  against  the  whole  class; 
but  there  are  some  stubborn  facts  that  cannot  be  success- 
fully challenged.  When,  in  1916,  Buddhist  and  Shinto 
leaders  in  Osaka  were  asked  to  co-operate  in  the  effort  to 
prevent  the  rebuilding  of  the  vice  district,  which  had  been 
burned,  they  declined  to  do  so,  although  some  individual 
Japanese  of  these  faiths  gave  hearty  assistance.  Indeed 
the  head  priest  of  a  great  Shinto  shrine  actually  performed 
a  ceremony  of  propitiation  over  the  grounds  of  the  proposed 
new  prostitute  quarters.  I  was  credibly  informed  that  it 
is  not  uncommon  to  open  a  new  resort  of  vice  with  religious 
ceremonies  conducted  by  Buddhist  priests,  and  that  priests 
often  visit  brothels  to  collect  alms  from  the  inmates. 


330  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

The  neighborhood  of  many  of  the  large  temples  reeks 
with  brothels,  which  are  so  numerous  and  whose  inmates 
are  so  openly  aggressive  in  soliciting  men  who  are  on  their 
way  to  and  from  the  temples  that  it  is  impossible  to  doubt 
that  such  juxtaposition  to  places  of  worship  implies,  if  not 
direct  connivance,  at  least  absence  of  protest  from  the 
temple  authorities,  and  a  conception  of  religion  which  sees 
no  incongruity  between  Buddhist  observances  and  houses 
of  prostitution.  "When  the  patriotic  youth  of  new  Japan, 
wishing  to  pay  homage  at  the  most  fashionable  shrines  of 
Ise,  are  compelled  to  reach  the  spot  by  passing  along  a  road 
lined  on  both  sides  with  legalized  brothels,  it  looks  as  if 
official  encouragement  to  impurity  was  offered,  or  at  least 
temptation  was  presented,  to  the  rising  generation."  x 

One  of  the  incidental  but  nevertheless  interesting  results 
of  Christian  missionary  work  in  Japan  is  an  attempt  on  the 
part  of  leading  Buddhists  to  revive  and  purify  their  religion. 
This  is  partly  due  to  the  diffusion  of  the  teachings  of  Chris- 
tianity, in  whose  light  the  Buddhist  leaders  see  more  clearly 
the  decay  and  moral  weakness  of  their  own  faith,  and  are 
led  to  go  back  to  its  original  teachings  and  to  bring  into 
new  prominence  some  of  the  ethical  precepts  of  its  founders. 
A  stronger  motive  is  self-defense,  for  Christianity's  doctrines 
and  the  standards  of  conduct  which  it  inculcates  compel 
Buddhism  to  undertake  radical  reforms  or  to  give  up  al- 
together. The  Japanese  mind  has  begun  to  be  less  indiffer- 
ent to  religious  questions,  and  signs  of  awakening  and  un- 
rest are  multiplying.  Would-be  reformers  have  sprung  up 
and  are  advocating  all  sorts  of  religious  vagaries.  Doctor 
Anezaki,  professor  in  the  Imperial  University,  commented 
in  1917  upon  the  significant  fact  that  eight  or  ten  new 
fanatical,  superstitious  movements  were  just  budding  out 
which  had  not  been  noticed  by  the  public  press. 

Buddhist  leaders  became  alarmed.  They  began  to  use 
the  printing  press,  to  distribute  leaflets,  and  issue  periodicals. 
They  did  not  mince  words  in  attempting  to  shame  their 
people  into  activity.  The  first  number  of  Jiyu  Bukkyo,  a 

1  Ernest  W.  Clement  in  A  Handbook  of  Modern  Japan,  p.  167. 


BUDDHISM  AND  SHINTOISM  IN  JAPAN          331 

Buddhist  magazine  which  appeared  in  Kobe  in  October, 
1916,  frankly  said  in  a  leading  editorial:  "Buddhism  is  like 
a  hotel  near  the  railway  but  between  stations.  Once  it  was 
a  famous  hostelry,  but  the  advent  of  the  railway  has  left  it 
stranded  and  the  whole  neighborhood  suffers  from  neglect. 
Even  should  a  wayfarer  drop  in  he  will  find  no  comfort, 
for  the  place  is  not  able  to  renew  its  furnishings  and  it  has 
become  worn  out  and  obsolete.  Just  so  is  Japanese  Bud- 
dhism— passed  by  and  ignored  by  modern  progress  and  un- 
able to  afford  spiritual  refreshment.  True,  there  are  still 
some  intellectuals,  people  like  university  professors,  who 
profess  Buddhism,  but  they  are  very  few,  the  great  majority 
of  Buddhists  being  but  blind  followers  of  tradition.  They 
do  as  their  fathers  did,  being  too  ignorant  to  know  what 
changes  science  has  wrought  in  the  world,  while  then*  tra- 
dition is  so  dead  that  it  has  no  influence  on  their  lives." 

Buddhism  in  many  lands  has  incorporated  the  ideas  of 
other  faiths  as  a  sponge  absorbs  water,  and  Japanese  Bud- 
dhism is  no  exception.  The  methods  of  Christianity  have 
been  freely  borrowed. 

Recognizing  the  advantage  of  Sunday-schools,  a  fund  of 
a  million  yen  ($500,000)  was  raised  a  few  years  ago  to 
establish  them,  and  within  a  recent  period  of  six  months 
over  800  were  started,  with  an  enrolment  of  120,000  children. 
The  regulations  for  Sunday-schools,  promulgated  in  1914, 
include  the  following: 

"Art.  II.  The  aim  of  the  Sunday-Schools  is  to  cultivate  the  char- 
acter of  the  pupils  according  to  the  doctrine  of  our  sect  (Shinshiu) . 

"  Art.  III.  To  attain  the  aim  above  mentioned,  the  Sunday-Schools 
should  make  some  connection  with  the  primary  schools  and  the  pupils' 
homes,  and  on  Sunday  give  lessons  on  religion  and  morality.  If 
local  conditions  allow,  hand  work  and  manners  are  to  be  taught  besides. 

"  Art.  IV.  There  shall  be  a  superintendent  in  each  Sunday  School, 
and  the  superior  of  a  temple  or  a  teacher  only  can  take  charge  of  it. 

"  Art.  VII.  Every  school  should  make  an  educational  report  twice 
a  year. 

"Art.  VIII.  The  expenses  of  the  School  shall  be  defrayed  out  of 
the  contributions  of  the  supporters  and  subscriptions  to  the  local 
temple." 


332  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

The  extent  of  the  copying  of  Christian  material  is  curiously 
illustrated  in  the  songs  that  are  provided  for  these  Buddhist 
Sunday-schools.  Some  of  them  are  taken  almost  bodily 
from  the  Christian  hymn-book — words,  tune,  meter,  and 
chorus,  the  only  change  being  the  substitution  of  the  name 
Buddha  for  Jesus  and  the  omission  of  an  occasional  stanza 
whose  Christian  meaning  cannot  be  twisted  to  fit  Buddhist 
teachings.  It  is  odd  to  enter  a  Buddhist  school  and  find, 
as  one  visitor  did,  a  hundred  and  fifty  children  lustily  sing- 
ing: 

"Buddha  loves  me,  this  I  know"; 

and  to  note  that  the  organist  is  playing  the  tune  from  a 
Christian  hymnal.  If  it  be  true  that  imitation  is  the  sin- 
cerest  form  of  flattery,  missionaries  have  abundant  reason 
to  feel  flattered. 

The  Young  Men's  Christian  Association  has  been  made 
the  model  of  the  Young  Men's  Buddhist  Association,  which 
has  grown  rapidly  in  membership  and  influence.  Professor 
Kaneka  Umaji,  of  Waseda  University,  wrote:  "I  am  very 
glad  to  see  that  the  long  wished-for  Y.  M.  B.  A.  has  come 
into  being  among  the  students  of  this  university.  The 
times  needed  it,  and  I  am  glad  that  you  have  taken  up  the 
task  of  finding  a  new  Buddhism  which  shall  march  hand  in 
hand  with  the  progress  of  civilization.  Ancient,  divided, 
and  often  corrupt,  the  Buddhism  we  have  known  awaits 
your  reforms  to  regain  its  influence.  To  me,  Buddhism 
with  its  profound  philosophy  and  its  spiritual  power  over 
men  and  women  is  the  best  of  all  religions.  Yet  with  sorrow 
I  confess  that  it  fails  to  serve  the  youth  of  to-day.  It  is  a 
sun  obscured  in  clouds.  It  has  been  left  behind  by  a  pro- 
gressive world.  Not  a  few  young  men,  having  sought  in 
vain,  have  desperately  flung  their  lives  away  in  a  deep" 
cataract  pool  or  before  a  running  train.  Buddhism  must 
therefore  be  reformed."  l 

Buddhist  Women's  Associations  have  also  been  organ- 
ized. There  are  eight  such  associations  in  Tokyo,  the  old- 

1  Article  in  the  Seinem  Yvben,  December,  1916. 


BUDDHISM  AND  SHINTOISM  IN  JAPAN          333 

est  having  been  formed  in  1886.  A  Buddhist  Union  rep- 
resents and  co-ordinates  some  of  the  modern  movements, 
and  at  the  third  general  meeting  of  its  central  committee 
in  May,  1917,  one  of  the  main  subjects  of  discussion  was 
"how  to  perfect  the  establishment  of  the  Buddhist  Pro- 
tective Association." 

The  candor  of  the  leaders  of  the  new  movement  has  gone 
further  and  compared  Christian  and  Buddhist  missionary 
work  to  the  latter's  disadvantage.  Mokushoko  Shonin 
plainly  wrote  as  follows: 

"Christian  missionaries  go  into  the  remotest  parts  of  the  earth  to 
increase  their  converts,  braving  all  dangers  and  discomforts.  But 
what  do  the  Buddhist  priests  of  Japan  ?  Are  men  really  alive  who  are 
content  to  exist  upon  the  remuneration  they  receive  for  reading  pray- 
ers they  do  not  understand  at  funerals  ?  So  mechanical  is  their  per- 
formance that  they  make  prayers  at  piece-work  rates.  They  drink 
and  dissipate,  to  pay  for  which  they  resort  to  ways  of  getting  money 
from  which  even  laymen  shrink.  There  are  black  sheep  doubtless  in 
the  Christian  ministry,  but  in  the  bulk  there  is  no  comparison.  Chris- 
tian workers  constantly  strike  for  the  amelioration  of  social  condi- 
tions— to  rescue  women,  to  educate  the  poor,  to  succor  orphans, 
and  the  Buddhist  priests  loiter  far  hi  their  rear.  .  .  .  Buddhist 
preachers  appeal  only  to  the  old  and  uneducated  whom  they  tell  of 
the  delights  of  paradise,  but  they  have  no  message  for  this  life.  Their 
preaching  places  often  remain  closed  for  months  at  a  tune.  While 
the  Christians  strive  to  save  souls,  the  Buddhists  flatter  millionaires 
and  magnates.  There  are  72,000  first-class  Buddhist  temples,  52,000 
chief  priests,  148,000  preachers,  52,000  probationary  priests,  and  12,000 
students  in  Buddhist  schools — an  astonishing  number  of  men  to  be 
doing  nothing."  1 

How  far  the  reformers  can  succeed  in  galvanizing  the 
moribund  body  of  Buddhism  into  some  kind  of  life  remains 
to  be  seen.  They  are  certainly  trying  hard.  Realizing 
that  only  educated  men  can  influence  modern  Japan  and 
compete  with  the  highly  trained  Christian  leaders,  they 
have  founded  colleges  to  whose  graduates  they  can  look 
for  future  leadership,  and  they  are  actively  at  work  in  many 
fields  of  effort.  Special  occasions  are  magnified  in  every 

1  Article  in  the  Shin  Nippon,  October,  1916. 


334 

possible  way.  The  Shinshiu  sect  of  Buddhists  celebrated 
the  six  hundred  and  fiftieth  anniversary  of  the  death  of  its 
founder  at  Kyoto,  in  1911,  with  elaborate  ceremonies. 
Vast  multitudes  attended;  but  observers  noted  that  they 
were  almost  wholly  from  the  country  towns  and  villages, 
and  that  there  were  very  few  young  people. 

Among  the  activities  of  modern  Japanese  Buddhists  is  an 
effort  to  rehabilitate  Buddhism  in  Korea,  where,  as  we 
noted  hi  a  former  chapter,  it  long  since  disappeared  as  a 
national  faith,  its  only  vestiges  to-day  being  a  few  remote 
mountain  monasteries,  and  here  and  there  a  ruined  temple 
or  a  dirty  priest  slinking  like  an  outcast  in  the  outskirts  of 
some  town.  A  number  of  Japanese  Buddhist  propagan- 
dists were  sent  to  Korea  some  years  ago.  Others  followed, 
and  the  effort  has  been  earnestly  pressed.  A  Western  Chris- 
tian's estimate  of  the  true  character  and  the  poor  promise 
of  the  enterprise  might  not  be  deemed  impartial.  For- 
tunately, it  is  not  necessary  for  me  to  appraise  it,  as  this 
has  been  done  by  two  Japanese  newspapers  whose  freedom 
from  bias  is  not  likely  to  be  challenged.  The  Japan  Times 
says:  "It  is  extremely  doubtful  that  the  Buddhist  religion, 
or  at  least  the  grossly  unphilosophical  and  superstitious 
part  of  it  which  alone  can  be  taught  by  average  priests, 
will  do  any  good  to  Koreans.  Koreans  as  a  whole  are 
born  to  all  sorts  and  forms  of  superstition  of  their  own, 
and  it  really  seems  a  sin  to  burden  them  with  more.  But 
that  is  only  by  the  way.  We  notice  an  opinion  expressed 
now  and  then  that  Buddhistic  propagation  should  be  a 
part  of  the  plan  to  assimilate  Koreans.  Call  it  a  social 
plan,  if  you  will,  but  its  end  is  unmistakably  political,  and 
we  strenuously  object  to  such  a  scheme.  .  .  .  The  case 
would  be  different  if  Buddhism,  however  degraded  in  its 
form  now,  had  in  any  way  been  helpful  in  bringing  about 
the  modern  civilization  of  Japan.  But  whatever  preten- 
sions it  may  set  forth  in  other  directions,  it  certainly  and 
absolutely  has  no  claim  to  make  in  this  particular  respect, 
that  is,  in  the  work  of  the  moral,  intellectual  and  social 
elevation  of  new  Japan.  In  Korea  we  are  now  to  do  the 


BUDDHISM  AND  SHINTOISM  IN  JAPAN         335 

same  work  over  again,  and  it  is  most  preposterous  for 
Buddhist  bonzes  to  come  forward  with  their  uncalled-for 
service  and  with  the  claim  that  they  can  and  will  do  in 
Korea  what  they  have  not  done,  and  never  have  even  tried 
to  do,  in  Japan.  It  is  still  more  intolerable  that  any  well 
meaning  friends  of  Koreans  should  ask  for  the  assistance 
of  those  worldly  and  narrow-viewed  latter-day  disciples  of 
Buddha.  There  will  be  enough  to  worry  about  in  Korea 
for  some  time  to  come,  and  the  sending  out  there  these 
bonzes  can  only  make  the  situation  worse." 

The  Seoul  Press  has  this  to  say :  "  Having  some  knowledge 
of  the  present  condition  of  Buddhism  hi  Japan,  we  find  it 
rather  hard  to  entertain  any  great  hope  as  to  the  future  of 
the  religion  in  this  country.  We  believe  few  will  contra- 
dict us  when  we  say  that  Buddhism  is  on  the  wane.  .  .  . 
The  only  time  educated  people  repair  to  a  Buddhist  temple 
is  when  they  attend  the  funeral  or  other  religious  service 
for  some  one  dear  to  them.  .  .  .  Buddhism  is  dying  in 
Japan,  and  scarcely  holds  its  place  as  a  religion  in  the  minds 
of  the  Japanese  younger  men.  It  is  not  a  power  having 
great  influence  in  the  shaping  of  then-  moral  character  and 
spurring  them  to  a  higher,  nobler  and  purer  life.  Inasmuch 
as  Buddhism  is  in  such  a  condition  in  Japan,  it  is  reason- 
able, we  think,  to  entertain  some  doubt  as  to  the  success  of 
the  proposed  propaganda  of  the  religion  hi  this  country." 

Many  Japanese  are  openly  sceptical  regarding  the  ability 
of  Buddhism  to  adapt  itself  to  modern  conditions  in  either 
Korea  or  Japan.  An  editorial  in  the  Kirisuto  Kycko  says 
that  there  is  a  general  expectation  that  religion  will  be 
changed  as  a  result  of  the  war,  and  it  asks:  "Will  Bud- 
dhism, the  religion  of  Japan  from  ancient  times,  be  able  to 
undergo  a  change  sufficient  to  enable  it  to  lead  the  new 
Japan?"  The  writer  declares  "that  such  a  revival  is 
scarcely  within  the  range  of  possibility.  Buddhism  is  abso- 
lutely opposed,  as  a  religion,  to  the  present  fife.  Whatever 
efforts  the  Buddhists  may  put  forth  to  meet  the  needs  of 
the  new  times,  their  most  important  scriptural  teachings 
contradict  such  efforts  by  their  antagonism  to  the  present 


336  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

life.  On  the  other  hand,  if  some  slight  changes  be  made  in 
the  polity  of  the  churches  (Christian),  and  if  we  cast  off  the 
teachings  that  smack  of  Europe  and  America,  and  give  ex- 
pression to  a  purer  teaching  concerning  Christ  and  God, 
then  Christianity  will  be  in  position  to  exert  a  living  leader- 
ship capable  of  satisfying  the  needs  of  the  nation."1 

Nevertheless,  Mr.  Nakashoji,  Minister  of  Agriculture  and 
Commerce,  said  in  an  address  at  a  meeting  of  Buddhists: 
"I  feel  regret  on  account  of  the  evils  that  lead  the  nation 
to  devote  itself  to  the  almighty  dollar.  With  the  coming  in 
of  new  ideas  disorder  has  arisen  here  and  there.  ...  At 
this  time,  the  Buddhist  religious  leaders  are  going  to  do 
their  utmost  in  order  to  destroy  such  evil  tendencies."  2 

Every  open-minded  Christian  will  applaud  such  a  pur- 
pose. If  Buddhism  is  to  exist  at  all,  and  it  undoubtedly 
is  for  some  time  yet,  it  is  better  to  have  it  clean  than  un- 
clean, a  friend  rather  than  a  foe  of  morality.  Nothing  could 
be  worse  than  to  have  some  of  the  religious  guides  of  a 
deeply-rooted  national  faith  reeking  with  impurity,  as  many 
Buddhist  priests  notoriously  are,  and  others,  although  not 
personally  vile,  yet  apparently  seeing  no  wrong  in  immorality 
and  making  no  protest  against  it.  In  so  far  as  the  reform 
movement  leads  earnest  souls  to  remain  in  the  faith  of  their 
fathers  rather  than  to  follow  Christ,  it  will  indeed  do  harm. 
Some  Japanese  are  now  being  influenced  to  do  this  who 
otherwise  would  have  renounced  Buddhism.  This  is  not 
a  light  danger,  since  it  encourages  men  to  imagine  that  they 
can  appropriate  the  social  results  of  Christianity  without 
the  deeper  truths  and  obligations  from  which  the  results 
flow.  A  Christless  morality  may  again  illustrate  the  apho- 
rism that  the  good  is  the  enemy  of  the  best. 

On  the  other  hand,  reformed  Buddhism  is  so  manifestly 
a  half-way  house,  so  evidently  an  imitation  of  Christianity, 
and  the  road  beyond  it  is  so  clear  and  straight,  that  thought- 
ful Japanese  who  really  desire  a  virile  religion  of  trans- 
forming power  are  not  likely  to  be  content  with  such  a 

1  Quoted  in  The  Japan  Evangelist,  July,  1917. 
»Tr.  The  Japan  Evangelist,  June,  1917. 


o 


O       * 

C    <! 

3 

CQ 


BUDDHISM  AND  SHINTOISM  IN  JAPAN          337 

weak  compromise  as  "revived"  Buddhism  offers.  It  has 
no  roots,  if  I  may  change  the  figure,  and  is  merely  attempt- 
ing to  tie  the  fruits  of  Christianity  to  the  withered  branches 
of  a  dead  tree.  Marquis  Okuma  may  be  assumed  to  know, 
and  he  has  frankly  said:  "To  be  sure,  Japan  had  her  re- 
ligions and  Buddhism  prospered  greatly;  but  this  pros- 
perity was  largely  through  political  means.  Now  this 
creed  has  been  practically  rejected  by  the  better  classes, 
who,  being  spiritually  thirsty,  have  nothing  to  drink."1 

The  other  great  national  faith  of  Japan  is  Shintoism.  Is 
it  a  religion?  No  one  ever  thought  of  arguing  that  it  is 
not  until  the  Christians  in  Japan  objected  to  the  obser- 
vances of  Shinto  rites  on  the  ground  that  they  are  incompati- 
ble with  Christianity.  Then  the  argument  became  general, 
Shinto  advocates  declaring  that  its  ceremonies  are  to  be  re- 
garded as  patriotic  and  social  rather  than  religious,  and  that 
every  loyal  Japanese  could  observe  them  without  disloyalty 
to  his  religious  convictions.  Finally,  the  government  took 
a  hand  in  the  discussion  by  officially  distinguishing  between 
state  Shintoism  and  religious  Shintoism,  and  it  divided  the 
Bureau  of  Shrines  and  Temples  into  the  Bureau  of  Shrines 
and  the  Bureau  of  Religions,  thus  taking  Shintoism  out  of 
the  category  of  religion  and  putting  it  into  the  category  of 
state  institutions.  Thereafter,  ceremonies  at  the  shrines 
were  under  the  supervision  of  government  officials. 

This,  however,  did  not  end  the  discussion.  Historically, 
the  Japanese  have  for  centuries  regarded  Shinto  "as  the 
way  of  the  gods."  The  general  Christian  view  has  been 
admirably  stated  by  the  Right  Reverend  J.  G.  Combaz, 
Bishop  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  at  Nagasaki,  in  an 
article  in  which  he  gives  full  and  sympathetic  recognition 
to  the  intentions  of  the  government  in  regard  to  Shinto  as 
simply  a  form  of  patriotic  and  social  observance;  but  he 
declares  that  "nevertheless,  however  generous  our  frame 
of  mind  may  be  with  regard  to  this  view  of  the  shrines,  we 
cannot  give  our  support  to  it."  And  he  assigns  the  follow- 
ing reasons:  "For  several  thousand  years  the  officials  and 

» Address,  October  9,  1909. 


338  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

the  people  alike  have  looked  upon  them  as  sanctuaries  and 
places  of  worship  and  as  institutions  founded  upon  the 
supernatural.  This  being  so,  how  can  the  nature  of  shrines 
be  changed  by  a  single  government  edict?  One  may 
change  the  label  on  a  bottle,  but  the  contents  will  not  be 
changed  thereby.  In  the  official  edict  it  is  said  that  shrines 
are  dedicated  to  the  worship  of  the  gods  of  the  Empire  for 
the  public  observance  of  festivals  and  for  public  worship. 
The  use  of  the  term  'worship'  is  sufficient  evidence  of  the 
religious  nature  of  the  performance.  It  is  also  officially  said 
that  the  object  of  the  shrines  is  to  pay  respect  to  gods  who 
have  rendered  meritorious  service  to  the  State,  to  the  Im- 
perial House  and  to  ancestors.  Is  not  such  reverence  of  a 
religious  nature?  .  .  .  The  rites  observed  at  shrines  are 
in  accordance  with  the  rules  of  the  book  of  ceremonies.  .  .  . 
From  their  very  nature  they  must  be  deemed  a  form  of 
religious  observance.  The  fact  that  government  officials, 
and  not  Shinto  priests,  conduct  the  ceremonies  does  not 
deprive  them  of  their  religious  nature.  In  the  ancient 
Roman  Empire  also,  officials  took  charge  of  such  shrines. 
But  this  was  done  in  order  to  render  the  rites  more  im- 
pressive to  the  popular  mind  and  to  give  dignity  to  their 
observance.  When  the  officials  performed  the  rites,  they 
did  precisely  what  the  priests  were  accustomed  to  do  and 
were,  in  fact,  assisted  by  the  priests.  The  shrines,  therefore, 
could  not  be  devoid  of  religious  character."1 

This  view  finds  ample  support  in  the  opinions  of  men 
who  cannot  be  charged  with  religious  bias.  That  keen 
analyst  of  Japanese  life  and  character,  Lafcadio  Hearn, 
wrote:  "Stated  in  the  simplest  possible  form,  the  peculiar 
element  of  truth  in  Shinto  is  the  belief  that  the  world  of  the 
living  is  directly  governed  by  the  world  of  the  dead.  That 
every  impulse  or  act  of  man  is  the  work  of  a  god,  and  that 
all  the  dead  become  gods  are  the  basic  ideas  of  the  cult."2 

That  high   Japanese   authority,    Professor   T.    Inouye, 

1  Article  in  the  Kirisutokyoho,  March  28,  1918;   translated  in  The  Japan 
Evangelist,  May,  1918. 
*  Kokoro,  pp.  21  and  200. 


d 

i 

cc 


3 
3 

I 


339 

says:  "Shrines  are  the  vehicles  which  give  expression  to  the 
Shinto  spirit  and  our  religious  institutions.  The  religious 
rites  practised  in  connection  with  them  are  the  hairi,  saikei, 
and  kito — worship,  ceremonies  and  prayer.  These  all  alike 
are  religious  ceremonials.  It  is  clearly  a  mistake  to  put 
the  shrines  outside  the  category  of  religion."  Professor  K. 
Kakehi  expresses  a  like  opinion.  "Reverence  for  shrines," 
he  says,  "is  religious  in  nature,  and  the  view  that  reverence 
paid  to  them  is  not  religious  is  meaningless.  It  is  a  high 
form  of  religion  even  from  the  scientific  point  of  view." 
Significance,  too,  must  be  given  to  the  fact  that  when,  in 
1912,  the  Vice-Minister  of  Home  Affairs  called  a  con- 
ference of  the  religious  leaders  of  the  Empire,  to  be  de- 
scribed in  a  later  chapter,  he  invited  representatives  of 
Shintoism  as  well  as  of  Buddhism  and  Christianity;  and 
that  in  his  public  statement  regarding  the  conference  he 
used  these  words:  "Shintoism,  Buddhism  and  Christianity 
are  all  religions.  .  .  .  Shintoism  and  Buddhism  have  long 
had  a  recognized  place  as  religions  of  the  Japanese  people." 

We  cordially  concur,  and  we  believe  with  all  Protestant 
missionaries  and  Japanese  Christians,  in  the  statement  of 
Bishop  Combaz  that  "as  long  as  the  Japanese  stand  firm 
on  their  historic  past,  no  one  can  find  fault  with  them,  much 
less  can  any  one  expect  them  to  be  disloyal  to  their  own 
country.  But  we  deeply  regret  that  the  Japanese  still 
retain  a  mythology  long  ago  given  up  by  other  countries 
as  being  unreasonable  and  untrustworthy;  and  not  only 
so,  but  with  a  certain  coercion  this  mythology  is  required  to 
be  recognized." 

Meantime,  Shintoism  is  a  waxing  power  rather  than,  like 
Buddhism,  a  waning  one.  In  1912  the  number  of  Shinto 
shrines  was  127,076,  but  the  latest  available  figures  place 
the  number  at  137,184.  Fourteen  thousand  five  hundred 
and  twenty-seven  Shinto  priests  are  connected  with  them, 
and  the  total  number  of  preachers  and  teachers  of  religious 
Shinto  is  given  as  74,619.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  the 
increase  of  national  prosperity  and  power  resulting  from 
the  world  war  is  redounding  to  the  benefit  of  Shintoism  as 


340  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

well  as  to  that  of  commercial  and  political  influence.  A 
prominent  Japanese  has  recently  said:  "The  present  war 
has  led  some  of  us  to  agnosticism  or  national  Shintoism. 
Shintoism  has  made  great  progress  at  the  expense  of  Chris- 
tianity by  the  support  of  our  Imperial  Court  and  the 
government,  and  the  Ise  Shrine  and  influential  professors 
in  the  Imperial  University.  National  spirit  combined  with 
the  faith  of  old  Shintoism  has  risen  in  power,  and  is  attract- 
ing the  attention  of  intelligent  Japanese  young  men.  This 
phenomenon  can  not  be  ignored  by  those  who  care  about 
the  spiritual  welfare  of  our  people." 

From  all  of  which  it  appears  that  Shintoism  is  likely  to 
remain  a  force  to  be  reckoned  with  for  some  time  to  come. 


CHAPTER  XXII 
CHARACTER  OF  JAPANESE  RULE  IN  KOREA 

FROM  the  view-point  of  international  law  and  diplomatic 
intercourse  this  question  primarily  relates  to  Japan's  treat- 
ment of  her  own  subjects;  but  it  may  be  said  of  nations, 
as  of  individuals,  that  "none  of  us  liveth  to  himself."  The 
world  has  passed  the  stage  in  which  any  government  is  re- 
garded as  morally  free  to  do  as  it  pleases  with  a  subject 
people  without  regard  to  the  public  opinion  of  mankind. 
America's  treatment  of  the  Indians,  Negroes,  Chinese,  and 
Japanese  in  the  United  States  and  of  the  Hawaiians  and 
Filipinos  in  their  Pacific  archipelagos,  and  British,  French, 
Belgian,  and  German  treatment  of  their  subject  populations 
in  Asia  and  Africa,  are  universally  recognized  as  fair  sub- 
jects of  discussion.  While  Korea  is  a  national  possession 
of  the  Japanese,  their  policy  in  dealing  with  it  is  of  inter- 
national concern.  That  they  themselves  recognize  this  is 
proved  by  the  Government-General's  annual  publication  in 
English  of  a  thick  pamphlet  entitled  Reforms  and  Progress 
in  Korea,  which  gives  a  detailed  account  of  what  is  being 
done. 

We  should  frankly  recognize  at  the  outset  that  the  Japa- 
nese were  handicapped  in  Korea,  not  only  by  the  chaotic 
conditions  that  prevailed,  but  by  the  fact  that  if  domination 
by  some  foreign  power  was  inevitable,  the  Koreans  would 
have  been  better  pleased  if  that  power  had  been  some  other 
than  Japan.  The  two  nations  had  been  hereditary  enemies 
for  a  thousand  years.  Japanese  invasions  had  been  numer- 
ous, and  the  one  in  1592  had  wrought  such  devastation 
that  Korea  has  been  a  wretched  and  dilapidated  country 
ever  since.  After  his  observant  journey  through  the  Far 
East,  Lord  Curzon  wrote:  "The  national  race  hatred  be- 
tween the  Koreans  and  Japanese  was,  and  is,  one  of  the  most 

341 


342  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

striking  phenomena  in  contemporary  Korea."1  The  suf- 
ferings of  the  people  were  severe  during  the  China-Japan 
War  of  1894,  and  the  Russia-Japan  War  of  1905;  and  as 
the  Japanese  were  the  victors  in  both  wars,  they  were  natu- 
rally held  responsible  for  the  resultant  distress.  During 
these  wars,  and  for  years  after  them,  the  Japanese  were  not 
conciliatory  in  their  dealings  with  the  Koreans.  They  had 
long  regarded  them  as  inferiors,  and  had  never  taken  the 
pains  that  the  Russians  took  to  cajole  them,  to  keep  their 
Emperor  supplied  with  money,  and  to  cultivate  popular 
good-will.  They  managed  the  Koreans  with  the  brusque- 
ness  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  rather  than  with  the  suavity  of 
the  Oriental,  ignored  "face,"  which  every  Korean  sensi- 
tively cherishes,  and  in  general  dealt  with  the  Koreans 
about  as  Americans  dealt  with  the  North  American  In- 
dians, and  the  British  with  their  subject  populations  in 
India  and  Africa,  always  preserving  the  attitude  of  superiors 
even  when  acting  justly. 

Unfortunately,  too,  the  first  Japanese  who  came  to  Korea 
after  the  Russia-Japan  War  were  soldiers  and  camp-follow- 
ers. The  army  necessarily  occupied  the  country  during 
the  war,  and  for  some  time  after  its  close.  Military  rule  is 
strict  everywhere.  It  must  be  in  the  more  or  less  lawless 
conditions  which  follow  a  war;  but  it  is  none  the  less  galling 
to  civilians.  We  know  how  Filipinos  and  Americans  alike 
chafed  under  the  rule  of  the  United  States  army  in  the 
Philippines,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  the  American 
commanders  were  men  of  the  highest  rectitude  of  intention. 
The  Japanese  soldiers  in  Korea  were  those  who  had  fought 
in  the  campaigns  against  Russia.  They  regarded  Korea 
as  the  prize  of  the  war,  and  in  spite  of  Japanese  discipline 
they  had  something  of  that  spirit  of  exhilaration  and  law- 
lessness which  usually  characterizes  soldiers  after  a  victori- 
ous campaign.  White  men  who  remember  the  conduct  of 
the  foreign  troops  in  Peking  after  the  raising  of  the  siege 
of  the  legations  in  1900  will  not  be  surprised  at  the  attitude 
of  Japanese  troops  in  Korea.  During  the  period  of  military 

1  Problems  of  the  Far  East,  pp.  194-195. 


CHARACTER  OF  JAPANESE  RULE  IN  KOREA     343 

occupation  there  were  undoubtedly  many  cases  of  brutality, 
and  the  enterprises  which  were  necessary  to  strengthen 
Japanese  occupation  were  carried  out  with  scant  regard  for 
the  feelings  of  the  people. 

The  civilian  immigrants  who  poured  into  Korea  after  the 
war  were  not  the  best  type  of  Japanese.  Americans  know 
the  breed — the  lawless  characters  in  the  frontier  mining- 
camps  of  a  generation  ago,  who  did  their  ruthless  pleasure 
in  Alaska  and  became  the  carpet-baggers  of  the  Southern 
States  after  the  Civil  War.  Our  usually  good-natured  Mr. 
Taft  characterized  the  dissolute  and  brutal  Americans  whom 
he  found  in  the  Philippines,  when  he  became  Governor- 
General,  with  a  sharpness  of  invective  which  made  them  his 
bitter  enemies.  He  declared  that  they  were  the  worst 
obstacle  to  America's  purpose  to  deal  justly  with  the  Fili- 
pinos. The  same  class  of  Japanese  hurried  to  Korea,  and 
they  rode  rough-shod  over  the  helpless  natives,  appropriating 
food,  seizing  farm-animals,  taking  possession  of  land,  mal- 
treating women,  and,  in  some  instances  when  opposed, 
burning  houses  and  even  villages. 

The  Nagamori  land  scheme  aroused  wide-spread  alarm. 
Nagamori  was  a  speculator  who,  backed  by  the  Secretary 
of  the  Japanese  Legation  (the  Minister,  Mr.  Hayashi,  was 
then  absent  in  Japan),  induced  the  weak  Korean  Emperor 
to  grant  him  an  exclusive  concession  for  a  period  of  fifty 
years  to  reclaim,  improve,  and  cultivate  forests,  fields  and 
waste  lands,  exclusive  of  the  grounds  of  imperial  mausolea, 
temple-grounds,  preserved  forests,  government  and  private 
lands  already  reclaimed.  This  practically  turned  over  the 
larger  part  of  the  country  to  this  daring  speculator.  As 
soon  as  the  meaning  of  the  concession  became  clear,  a  storm 
of  protest  broke  forth.  We  cannot  believe  that  a  man  like 
Mr.  Hayashi  would  have  countenanced  such  a  bare-faced 
land-grab.  The  Tokyo  authorities,  with  whom  he  was  at 
the  time,  disavowed  the  whole  scheme  and  compelled  the 
ingenious  promoter  to  relinquish  it.  But  the  memory 
rankled  in  the  minds  of  the  Koreans,  who  believed  that  it 
was  a  sample  of  what  they  might  expect  from  the  rapacity 


344  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

of  their  conquerors  whenever  too  much  publicity  was  not 
involved. 

The  course  of  the  Japanese  was  usually  more  exemplary 
in  regions  where  officers  of  high  rank  were  resident,  and 
where  foreigners  had  opportunity  to  notice  what  was  being 
done.  Officials  of  lower  grade  in  places  remote  from  the 
capital  were  not  always  so  considerate.  Inferior  men,  far 
from  the  observation  of  their  superiors,  were  able  to  indulge 
their  temper  or  prejudices  with  little  fear  of  consequences. 
Doubtless  some  of  the  stories  of  injustice  are  susceptible 
of  explanation;  but  the  reports  are  too  numerous  and  ex- 
plicit to  be  dismissed  as  altogether  baseless.  We  know 
what  white  men  have  sometimes  done  when  placed  in  abso- 
lute control  of  a  helpless  people,  and  it  is  not  surprising 
that  some  Japanese  have  showed  the  same  traits  in  like  cir- 
cumstances. Some  of  the  documents  of  this  period,  hi  my 
possession,  are  not  pleasant  reading.  Shortly  after  Vis- 
count Terauchi  became  Resident-General,  in  1910,  he 
frankly  admitted  that  there  was  some  foundation  for  com- 
plaints, and  he  as  frankly  deplored  them,  for  in  that  year 
the  Japan  Times  gave  the  following  account  of  an  interview 
by  the  Seoul  representative  of  a  Tokyo  news  agency:  "The 
Resident-General  says  he  greatly  regrets  to  find  that  the 
Japanese  residents  in  Korea  are  sometimes  inclined  to 
despise  and  oppress  the  Korean  people.  Koreans  have, 
therefore,  a  tendency  to  bear  a  grudge  against  the  Japanese. 
.  .  .  The  Resident-General  is  afraid  that  such  acts  may 
not  be  isolated,  and  thus  contribute  to  the  injury  of  the  re- 
lations between  Japanese  and  Koreans  in  general." 

Conditions  improved,  but  the  revelations  in  connection 
with  the  "Korean  Conspiracy  Case"  showed  that  in  1911 
and  1912  Korea  was  swarming  with  suspicious  secret  police 
and  ruthless  gendarmes,  and  that  the  lower  courts  were 
under  police  control.  It  is  not  easy  for  the  outside  world 
to  get  an  accurate  idea  of  the  real  situation,  for  the  censor- 
ship limits  the  publication  of  unfavorable  opinions  in  Korea, 
and  foreigners  sometimes  find  it  prudent  to  be  careful 
about  what  they  intrust  to  the  mails.  The  officially  influ- 


CHARACTER  OF  JAPANESE  RULE  IN  KOREA     345 

enced  press  gives  the  most  glowing  accounts  of  contentment 
and  prosperity.  Japanese  in  Japan  have  frankly  admitted 
that  Korea  is  not  an  Arcadia  of  delights,  and  they  have 
criticised  with  a  freedom  that  would  hardly  have  been  per- 
mitted in  Korea.  Witness  the  following  from  the  Shin 
Nippon:  "The  Governor-General's  desire  is  to  make  the 
peninsula  one  big  fortress,  and  he  seems  to  regard  all  those 
engaged  in  industrial  or  commercial  work  in  Korea  as  mere 
camp  followers  within  the  walls  of  a  barracks."  l 

The  Reverend  George  Shigetsugu  Murata  wrote  an  article 
in  The  Oriental  Review  for  October,  1912,  in  which,  after 
making  some  criticisms  upon  the  missionaries  and  Korean 
Christians,  he  frankly  said:  "It  is  not  only  Koreans  who 
make  mistakes.  When  I  was  in  Korea,  a  company  of 
Japanese  soldiers  burnt  down  a  Christian  church  from  a 
mere  fit  of  passion.  On  another  occasion,  a  party  of  sol- 
diers entered  a  church  during  a  prayer-meeting  and  de- 
manded lodging.  When  asked  to  wait  till  the  end  of  the 
service,  they  drove  out  the  congregation  at  the  end  of 
bayonets,  and  occupied  the  church  for  the  night.  A  drunken 
soldier  forced  his  way  into  the  house  of  Doctor  W.  A.  Noble, 
a  missionary  friend  of  mine,  without  the  slightest  reason 
for  so  doing.  These  acts  caused  just  criticism  against  the 
Japanese  officials." 

The  Chu  Karon  published  an  article  by  Doctor  Yoshino, 
who  was  referred  to  as  a  university  professor,  giving  his 
impressions  of  a  visit  to  Korea  in  1916.  After  enumerating 
the  great  material  improvements  that  had  been  made,  he 
wrote:  "The  above,  however,  is  merely  the  surface  condi- 
tion of  things.  It  is  impossible  for  mere  casual  visitors  to 
know  whether  or  not  there  are  dead  men's  bones  under  the 
whited  sepulchres.  The  Japanese  authorities  declare  that 
peace  is  enjoyed  all  over  the  country.  There  is  no  doubt 
whatever  about  that,  but  it  is  nothing  but  the  dull  peace  of 
serfdom.  .  .  .  Without  consideration  and  mercilessly  they 
[the  authorities]  have  resorted  to  laws  for  the  expropriation 
of  lands,  the  Koreans  concerned  being  compelled  to  part 

1  Translation  in  the  China  Press,  June  21,  1912. 


346  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

with  their  family  property  almost  for  nothing.  On  many 
occasions  they  have  been  also  forced  to  work  on  the  con- 
struction of  the  roads  without  receiving  any  wages.  .  .  . 
As  far  as  the  law  is  concerned,  Koreans  and  Japanese  are 
on  precisely  the  same  footing.  This  is  the  theory,  but  the 
fact  is  not  exactly  the  same.  .  .  .  They  [Koreans]  are 
discriminated  against  both  officially  and  privately.  .  .  . 
Business  men  in  Korea  are  fully  acquainted  with  the  ex- 
istence of  this  evil,  but  can  say  nothing  against  it,  the  free- 
dom of  speech  being  severely  restricted.  It  must  be  re- 
membered that  papers  and  magazines  published  in  Japan 
are  not  allowed  to  enter  Korea  if  they  contain  articles 
criticising  Japanese  official  methods  in  the  peninsula."  l 

This  is  plain  speaking,  and  it  cannot  be  charged  to  for- 
eign prejudice  since  it  comes  from  a  Japanese.  It  is  quite 
safe  to  assume  that  the  article  was  not  permitted  to  enter 
Korea.  Since  then  a  foreign  resident  of  Korea  has  written : 
"  We  are  now  living  in  the  age  of  permits.  We  have  to  have 
permits  for  everything  from  killing  a  wild  goose  or  estab- 
lishing a  new  church,  hiring  or  dismissing  a  teacher  or 
preacher,  to  forty  other  things.  If  a  guest  comes  and  stays 
more  than  a  few  days,  we  have  to  report  him  to  the  police 
and  repeat  the  operation  when  he  leaves.  It  takes  a  good 
deal  of  time  running  to  the  police  office  for  permits  and  to 
make  reports.  The  German  system  of  espionage  is  quite 
well  established  here  now.  It  is  pretty  galling  on  the  nerves 
of  one  who  has  been  brought  up  in  a  country  where  police- 
men mind  their  own  business,  and  one  does  not  know  of 
the  existence  of  a  government  till  one  becomes  a  male- 
factor or  has  to  pay  taxes." 

Whatever  may  be  said  hi  defense  of  stern  measures  as  a 
political  and  military  necessity  in  dealing  with  the  peculiar 
conditions  in  Korea,  there  remains  a  wide  difference  of 
opinion  regarding  the  general  course  of  the  Japanese.  The 
justice  of  their  methods  in  dealing  with  the  Koreans  is  a 
hotly  disputed  question.  The  pro-Japanese  view  is  vigor- 
ously presented  by  Professor  George  T.  Ladd  in  a  volume 

1  Translation  in  the  Japan  Weekly  Chronicle,  July  13,  1916. 


CHARACTER  OF  JAPANESE  RULE  IN  KOREA     347 

entitled  With  Marquis  Ito  in  Korea,  and  the  anti-Japanese 
view  is  presented  with  equal  vigor  in  Professor  Homer  B. 
Hulbert's  The  Passing  of  Korea.  Professor  Ladd,  who  went 
to  Korea  on  the  cordial  invitation  of  Prince  Ito,  and  whose 
visit  was  "personally  conducted"  by  the  Japanese,  exhausts 
his  vocabulary  in  pouring  out  his  contempt  upon  the  Ko- 
reans, who  manifested  only  languid  interest  hi  his  efforts 
to  convince  them  in  a  series  of  lectures  what  great  and  good 
people  their  Japanese  rulers  were.  Professor  Hulbert's 
point  of  view  is  that  of  deep  sympathy  with  the  Koreans, 
among  whom  he  lived  for  many  years  and  whom  he  regards 
as  a  grossly  wronged  people,  while  his  opinion  of  the  Japa- 
nese, sharpened  by  some  personal  experiences,  he  makes 
"as  emphatic  as  the  rules  of  the  House  will  permit,"  if  I 
may  borrow  a  phrase  of  Gladstone's  hi  the  British  Parlia- 
ment. 

Both  writers,  in  my  humble  opinion,  are  right  in  some 
things  and  wrong  in  others,  for  both  are  partisans.  Un- 
doubtedly the  conduct  of  the  Japanese  has  been  character- 
ized by  both  good  and  evil,  and  it  is  not  well  to  concentrate 
attention  upon  either  to  the  exclusion  of  the  other.  The 
judicious  man  will  seek  a  balanced  judgment  between  the 
two  extremes.1  To  this  end  I  hope  that  the  reader  who  has 
gone  with  me  thus  far  will  not  fail  to  read  my  following 
account  of  other  and  better  phases  of  Japanese  rule  in 
Korea,  which  are  quite  as  essential  to  a  fair  judgment. 

And  first,  we  should  bear  hi  mind  considerations  that 
have  been  mentioned  before,  and  that  will  bear  repetition 
as  fundamental  factors  in  the  situation,  namely:  that  the 
Japanese  justification  for  taking  Korea  lay  in  the  inescapa- 
ble facts  that,  if  Japan  had  not  occupied  the  peninsula, 
Russia  would  have  done  so;  that  Japan's  national  safety 
would  have  been  imperilled  by  Russian  occupation;  that 
Japanese  ascendancy  was  far  better  for  the  Koreans  than 

1  Cf.  for  additional  facts,  George  Kennan,  article  in  The  Outlook,  November 
11,  1905;  William  T.  Ellis,  article  in  The  North  American  Review,  October, 
1907;  F.  A.  McKenzie,  The  Tragedy  of  Korea,  pp.  108  seq.,  and  The  Unveiled 
East,  pp.  33-95;  Thomas  F.  Millard,  The  New  Far  East,  pp.  80-123;  B.  L. 
Putnam  Weale,  The  Truce  in  the  Far  East  and  Its  Aftermath,  pp.  40-108. 


348  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

Russian  ascendancy  would  have  been;  that  the  Korean 
Government  was  so  hopelessly  rotten  and  the  condition  of 
the  country  so  pitiable  that  there  was  no  possibility  of 
political  regeneration  from  within;  and  that  the  interests 
both  of  Koreans  and  of  the  other  peoples  concerned  made 
it  imperative  that  Japan  should  undertake  the  work  of 
reconstruction.  It  was  an  extraordinarily  difficult  task. 
Gross  abuses  existed — a  veritable  sink  of  misgovernment, 
corruption,  filth,  and  misery.  As  the  Japanese  are  not 
angels  but  fallible  human  beings,  it  is  not  surprising  that 
the  best  of  them  have  made  mistakes,  and  that  the  worst 
have  committed  crimes.  It  was  equally  inevitable  that 
some  of  the  best  of  the  Koreans  should  feel  their  national 
pride  wounded  by  the  domination  of  an  alien  government; 
that  corrupt  officials  and  indolent  peasants  should  resent 
the  reforms  that  had  to  be  forced  upon  them;  that  some 
misguided  men  should  resort  to  violent  methods  against 
their  new  rulers;  and  that  subordinate  officials  should  not 
always  be  considerate  and  humane  in  carrying  out  their 
task. 

Some  Koreans  manifested  their  resentment  against  the 
Japanese  in  ways  that  made  the  government  feel  that  stern 
measures  were  required.  While  the  so-called  "Korean 
Conspiracy  Case"  was  largely  a  product  of  excited  police 
imagination  and  officiousness,  there  were  other  cases  of  a 
more  substantial  character.  Patriotic  groups  were  formed 
in  various  parts  of  the  country.  Their  slogans  were: 
"Korea  for  the  Koreans;"  "It  is  better  to  die  than  to  be 
slaves."  One  of  the  most  formidable  of  these  groups  was 
the  II  Chin  Hoi,  which  was  formed  in  Seoul  in  1904.  Chris- 
tians were  prominent  among  its  founders  and  the  first 
meetings  were  opened  with  prayer.  No  unlawful  acts  were 
contemplated  and  no  secrecy  was  attempted.  Members 
were  exhorted  not  to  use  force  but  to  rely  upon  moral  sua- 
sion, and  a  well-known  Christian  evangelist  was  appointed 
to  inform  the  government  of  the  organization  of  the  society, 
and  of  its  peaceful  patriotic  purpose  along  four  lines: 
1.  More  firmly  to  establish  and  strengthen  the  present 


CHARACTER  OF  JAPANESE  RULE  IN  KOREA     349 

dynasty;  2.  restrain  the  nobility  in  their  office-bearing, 
assist  all  good  movements  and  resist  all  evil  ones;  3.  pro- 
tect the  common  people's  property  and  persons  from  nobles 
and  every  one  else;  and,  4.  regulate  the  Korean  soldiers  of 
whom  there  were  20,000  at  that  time,  some  of  them  quite 
unruly,  especially  in  the  country  districts.  The  member- 
ship of  the  society  rapidly  increased  until  there  was  a  verita- 
ble scramble  to  join.  The  good  objects  and  peaceful 
methods  of  the  society  were  soon  obscured.  Meetings  be- 
came turbulent,  and  violent  measures  were  advocated. 
Non-Christians  gained  control  and  the  Christian  members 
dropped  out  till  all  semblance  of  the  original  character  of 
the  society  was  lost,  and  it  became  a  menace  to  the  country. 

Another  patriotic  society  was  called  Chung  Yun  Hoi. 
Unfortunately  this  was  the  name  by  which  the  Young 
Men's  Christian  Association  is  known  in  China  and  Japan, 
and  it  was  also  the  name  of  the  young  people's  societies  in 
some  of  the  Methodist  and  Presbyterian  churches.  The 
astute  leaders  of  the  political  Chung  Yun  Hoi  quickly  took 
advantage  of  this  identity  of  names.  New  members  flocked 
into  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  and  the  local  church  societies,  and 
branches  were  formed  in  hundreds  of  outlying  towns.  Be- 
fore the  significance  of  the  movement  was  fully  realized, 
the  society  had  made  such  progress  that  it  had  nearly  cap- 
tured the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  and  many  of  the  Epworth  Leagues  of 
the  Methodist  churches. 

The  Wipyung  Society  (Righteous  Army)  was  started  in 
1907  and  spread  like  wild-fire.  Its  leaders,  too,  saw  the  gain 
that  would  accrue  to  them  if  they  could  utilize  the  Chris- 
tian churches,  as  these  churches  were  the  largest  and 
strongest  organizations  among  the  Koreans. 

These  societies  gained  such  headway  among  Christians 
that  it  looked  for  a  time  as  if  the  whole  Christian  enter- 
prise in  Korea  would  be  irreparably  damaged  by  becoming 
the  tool  of  a  political  party  whose  object  was  not  spiritual 
religion,  but  a  revolutionary  propaganda  against  the  gov- 
ernment. When  the  missionaries  saw  what  was  being  done 
under  cover  of  Christianity,  they  took  decisive  measures. 


350  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

The  Presbyterians  warned  their  churches  against  the  soci- 
eties, dismissed  evangelists  and  teachers  who  were  active 
in  them,  and  sharply  disciplined  members  whose  activities 
were  more  political  than  religious.  "Our  Mission,"  wrote 
a  missionary,  "set  ourselves  rigidly  against  it  [the  Wipyung 
Society],  and  we  have  held  our  church  and  almost  to  a  man 
our  members  from  going  into  it.  When  the  movement 
struck  Pyongyang  it  was  in  full  swing,  and  would  have 
swept  the  entire  population  in  if  it  had  not  been  for  the 
Christians  of  our  Mission.  Pastor  Kil  called  all  the  people 
together  and  pleaded  with  them  not  to  go  out,  and  he  held 
them  firm,  and  then  the  Christians  went  out  two  by  two 
throughout  the  city  urging  their  friends  as  individuals  to 
be  quiet.  They  stopped  the  movement  in  Pyongyang,  and 
it  was  stopped  all  over  those  two  provinces  in  the  same 
way."  The  Y.  M.  C.  A.  secretaries  and  Board  of  Directors 
also  took  energetic  steps  to  restore  their  organization  to 
its  proper  character  and  to  cut  off  political  affiliations,  and 
the  Methodists  put  the  pseudo-religious  society  out  of  their 
churches  and  forbade  the  Korean  Christian  leaders  to  have 
anything  to  do  with  it  under  pain  of  expulsion. 

These  drastic  measures  prevented  the  Christian  move- 
ment from  degenerating  into  a  more  anti-Japanese  propa- 
ganda; but  the  revolutionists  continued  their  activities 
under  other  forms  and  a  variety  of  names.  All  pretense  of 
religion  was  thrown  off.  Bands  of  desperate  men  began 
to  roam  about  the  country,  and  their  mountain  retreats 
became  caves  of  Adullam,  to  which  lawless  and  vicious 
characters  resorted.  Disbanded  Korean  soldiers  joined 
them  and  a  guerrilla  warfare  ensued.  Attacks  were  made 
not  only  upon  Japanese  but  upon  Koreans  who  were  sus- 
pected of  sympathy  with  them.  These  suspicions  were 
easily  made  the  excuse  for  paying  off  old  scores  against 
personal  enemies,  and  for  pillaging  houses  that  were  be- 
lieved to  contain  money.  Robberies  and  murders  were 
frequent  occurrences.  The  "Righteous  Army"  now  in- 
cluded in  its  vindictive  hatred  the  members  of  the  H  Chin 
Hoi  in  Seoul,  who  were  charged  with  being  too  friendly 


CHARACTER  OF  JAPANESE  RULE  IN  KOREA     351 

with  the  Japanese.  "They  wear  their  hair  short/'  wrote 
the  Reverend  Doctor  James  S.  Gale,  of  Seoul,  "but  so  do  the 
disbanded  soldiers,  and  so  do  the  Christians;  so  when  the 
Righteous  Army  men  capture  a  short-haired  passer,  they 
do  not  know  whether  he  is  a  soldier  or  a  Christian  or  an 
II  Chin  Hoi  man.  If  he  says  he  is  a  soldier  they  press  him 
into  service.  If  he  says  he  is  a  Christian  they  ask  him  to 
repeat  the  Lord's  Prayer  and  the  Ten  Commandments.  If 
he  does  this  successfully:  they  say:  'Yes,  you  are  a  Chris- 
tian, go  in  peace.'  But  if  he  fails  they  say:  'He  is  an  H 
Chin  Hoi  man,  take  him  out  and  shoot  him.' " 

The  blindly  furious  agitators  made  no  distinction  be- 
tween friendly  and  unfriendly  Japanese.  If  there  was  any 
man  who  deserved  the  good-will  of  the  Koreans  it  was  the 
humane  and  enlightened  Prince  Hirobumi  Ito,  who  had 
become  the  first  civil  Resident-General  of  Korea  in  1906, 
and  whose  administration  was  distinguished  by  many  of 
the  reforms  to  which  I  shall  presently  refer  in  some  detail. 
But  October  26,  1909,  a  Korean  fanatic  named  Indian 
Angan  assassinated  him  during  a  visit  to  Harbin,  whither 
he  had  gone  to  confer  with  representatives  of  the  Russian 
Government  regarding  Manchurian  matters.  "I  am  a 
Korean,"  proudly  said  the  assassin  when  questioned,  "and 
am  very  happy  to  have  fulfilled  my  duty  for  my  country 
and  to  have  avenged  my  people  and  also  the  public  dis- 
honor of  unfortunate  Korea."  This  outrage  was  followed 
by  repeated  efforts  to  kill  other  officials,  including  four 
attacks  in  1907  upon  Korean  Cabinet  Ministers  who  had 
accepted  appointment  by  the  Japanese.  In  March  of  the 
following  year  the  Honorable  Durham  White  Stevens,  an 
American  who  was  diplomatic  adviser  to  the  Department 
of  Foreign  Affairs  in  Prince  Ito's  administration  in  Seoul, 
was  fatally  shot  by  a  Korean  shortly  after  his  arrival  in 
San  Francisco,  his  offense  having  been  the  assistance  that 
he  had  given  to  the  Japanese,  and  an  interview  published 
in  the  San  Francisco  papers  defending  their  course  in  Korea. 

A  recent  author,  in  his  eagerness  to  defend  everything 
that  the  Japanese  have  done,  refers  to  the  Koreans  as  "sea- 


352 

thieves"  and  "semi-pirates,"  whose  conversion  into  peace- 
ful citizens  "requires  as  much  skill  and  firmness  as  to 
domesticate  savages."  He  declares  that  "gentle  methods, 
kindness  and  diplomacy  have  been  tried  in  both  instances, 
[Korea  and  Formosa]  only  to  be  requited  by  assassination, 
violence  and  brutality.  Then  what  the  Japanese  ingeniously 
call  a  ' stronger  pressure'  has  been  brought  to  bear,  and  it 
would  be  folly  to  deny  that  hard  blows  have  been  dealt 
alike  to  those  who  would  despoil  and  assassinate.  But 
when  all  milder  measures  fail,  there  remains  but  one  method 
of  dealing  with  armed  insurgents  and  bloodthirsty  savages, 
and  that  is  to  shoot  them." 

Fair-minded  Japanese  will  hardly  relish  that  kind  of  a 
defense.  A  writer  who  does  not  have  a  juster  compre- 
hension of  the  situation  than  such  words  indicate  should 
be  followed  with  caution.  There  are  thieving  and  brutal 
Koreans  just  as  there  are  thieving  and  brutal  Japanese, 
Americans,  and  Englishmen;  but  men  of  that  type  are  no 
more  common  in  Korea  than  in  other  lands.  I  have  trav- 
elled through  many  parts  of  Korea  without  losing  a  penny's 
worth  of  goods  or  witnessing  a  single  act  of  violence.  I 
have  seen  more  savagery  in  Glasgow  and  Chicago  in  a 
single  day  than  I  saw  in  Korea  in  two  months. 

Every  right-minded  person  must  sympathize  with  the 
grief  and  despair  of  the  better  class  of  Koreans.  Wretched 
as  Korea  was,  it  was  nevertheless  their  native  land.  They 
had  apparently  cared  little  for  it  as  long  as  they  had  it  to 
themselves;  but  when  an  alien  conqueror  appeared,  the 
patriotic  spirit  which  had  burned  low  suddenly  flamed  up. 
They  might  have  adapted  the  words  of  Daniel  Webster  in 
his  famous  address  to  the  jury  in  the  case  of  Dartmouth 
College  a  century  ago:  "It  is  a  poor  little  country,  but 
there  are  those  who  love  it." 

But  love  is  not  always  wise,  and  a  misguided  patriot 
may  be  his  country's  worst  enemy.  Hot-headed  youths 
added  to  the  clamor.  Shortly  after  the  arrival  of  Count 
Terauchi,  a  foreigner  in  Korea  wrote  me  about  "a  marked 
evidence  of  severity  in  the  government's  handling  of  the 


CHARACTER  OF  JAPANESE  RULE  IN  KOREA     353 

situation  now  that  did  not  exist  with  Prince  Ito,"  but  he 
added :  "  Since  you  were  here,  I  realize  more  and  more  that 
the  young  men  in  schools  are  the  most  radically  anti- 
government  natives  that  one  sees.  They  are  ungoverna- 
ble to  a  very  large  degree;  want  to  dictate  to  directors, 
principals,  superiors,  King,  cabinet  and  everybody.  The 
same  story  seems  true  of  China,  India,  Syria,  and  Egypt. 
Sometimes  when  the  obstinacy  and  pride  of  these  young 
fellows  rise  up  to  block  church  and  school  and  everything 
else  that  one  holds  dear,  I  begin  to  think  that  the  time  may 
come  when  the  government  will  have  to  hammer  these 
boys  into  law-abiding  shape."  This  was  probably  the  way 
the  officials  felt.  They  could  not  tolerate  disorders  and 
revolutionary  acts,  however  patriotically  intended.  In 
adopting  stern  measures  they  may  not  have  chosen  the 
wisest  course,  but  they  did  what  all  governments  are  quite 
apt  to  do  in  such  circumstances. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 
BENEFITS  OF  JAPANESE  RULE  IN  KOREA 

THE  establishment  of  civil  rule  by  Prince  Ito  in  1906  in- 
augurated a  better  era  than  the  unhappy  one  that  followed 
the  Russia-Japan  War.  He  was  in  many  respects  a  re- 
markable man.  As  a  youth  he  was  eager  to  learn  of  the 
outside  world.  It  was  not  easy  at  that  time  to  get  per- 
mission to  leave  the  country,  but  at  the  age  of  seventeen 
(1858)  he  and  a  friend,  who  afterward  became  the  famous 
Count  K.  Inouye,  secretly  escaped  to  a  British  vessel  that 
was  about  to  sail  for  England.  They  persuaded  the  cap- 
tain to  permit  them  to  work  then-  passage,  and  they  arrived 
in  London  friendless  and,  save  for  four  shillings,  penniless. 
Their  presence  became  known  to  Mr.  Hugh  Matteson,  a 
Christian  merchant  who  was  deeply  interested  in  foreign 
missions,  and  who  afterward  became  convener  of  the  For- 
eign Missionary  Society  of  the  English  Presbyterian  Church. 
He  generously  took  the  two  young  men  into  his  own  home, 
where  they  remained  for  two  years.  When  they  returned 
to  their  native  land  conditions  had  begun  to  change,  and, 
although  they  were  at  first  regarded  with  suspicion,  their 
intelligence  and  knowledge  of  European  methods  ere  long 
made  them  useful  to  the  government.  When  the  allied 
fleet  captured  Shimonoseki  in  1864,  the  Japanese  authorities 
called  upon  Ito  and  Inouye  to  confer  with  the  victors  re- 
garding terms.  They  discharged  this  delicate  duty  with 
such  skill  and  discretion  that  they  won  high  favor.  After 
that  their  rise  was  rapid.  The  list  of  positions  that  Ito  was 
called  upon  to  fill  at  various  times  during  his  subsequent 
career  is  a  striking  one:  Governor  of  Hyogo,  member  of 
special  embassy  to  Europe  to  revise  treaties,  organizer  of 
Japanese  banking  regulations,  Minister  of  Works  in  the 
Imperial  Cabinet,  framer  of  the  new  Constitution,  first 

354 


BENEFITS  OF  JAPANESE  RULE  IN  KOREA       355 

President  of  the  House  of  Peers,  negotiator  of  the  treaties 
of  Tien-tsin  and  Shimonoseki  with  China,  President  of  the 
Privy  Council,  representative  of  Japan  at  the  Diamond 
Jubilee  of  Queen  Victoria,  and  five  times  Prime  Minister. 
No  other  Japanese  bulks  so  large  in  the  period  of  transition 
from  feudal  to  modern  Japan,  and  no  other  had  so  influential 
a  part  in  shaping  the  national  policy  in  that  era  of  recon- 
struction. 

It  was  this  man,  the  foremost  statesman  of  the  empire, 
that  at  the  height  of  his  fame  came  to  Korea  in  1906  as  the 
first  Resident-General.  I  do  not  agree  with  those  who 
reviled  him  as  the  arch-enemy  of  Korea.  Granting  that 
some  of  his  methods  were  of  dubious  character,  and  that 
his  private  morals  were  criticised  even  in  his  own  country, 
where  laxity  is  common,  the  fact  remains  that  he  was  one 
of  the  very  wisest  and  most  progressive  of  the  public  men 
of  Japan,  and  that  he  had  large  and  considerate  views  of 
the  Koreans  and  of  the  duty  of  his  country  to  them.  If 
Korea  was  to  be  ruled  by  Japan  at  all,  its  friends  could  not 
have  suggested  a  better  Japanese  as  Resident-General  than 
Prince  Ito.  I  found  a  general  opinion,  not  only  among 
Japanese  but  among  missionaries  and  other  foreigners  with 
whom  I  talked,  that  he  was  a  firm  and  just  administrator 
who  earnestly  tried  to  better  conditions.  He  had  the 
statesmanship  to  see  that,  from  the  view-point  of  Japan 
herself,  it  was  expedient  to  deal  justly  with  a  subject  peo- 
ple. During  his  incumbency  of  three  years  he  placed  a 
higher  class  of  men  in  public  office,  enacted  wholesome  laws, 
made  roads,  built  railways,  encouraged  education,  reor- 
ganized the  courts,  systematized  the  revenues,  promoted 
agriculture  and  fisheries,  took  vigorous  measures  to  sup- 
press the  bands  of  brigands  who  infested  the  country  dis- 
tricts, and  promoted  other  salutary  reforms.  Prominent 
among  these  was  the  placing  of  the  currency  of  the  country 
on  a  gold  basis.  I  have  described  in  another  chapter  the 
financial  chaos  that  had  existed.  Prince  Ito  called  in  the 
numerous  coins  of  varying  weight  and  purity,  issued  new 
coins  of  uniform  value,  imposed  severe  penalties  for  counter- 


356  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

feiting,  and  inaugurated  plans  for  a  Bank  of  Korea,  which 
was  formally  established  July  27,  1909. 

One  of  his  first  acts  was  to  deal  sternly  with  the  brutal 
Japanese  who  had  been  guilty  of  the  kind  of  maltreatment 
of  the  Koreans  to  which  I  have  referred  in  a  preceding  chap- 
ter. Shortly  after  his  assumption  of  office,  in  1906,  he 
caused  a  law  to  be  enacted  giving  the  Resident-General 
authority  to  take  cognizance  of  any  Japanese  subjects 
having  no  fixed  abode  or  means  of  livelihood,  or  guilty  of 
using  intemperate  language,  or  resorting  to  extortion, 
usury,  or  cognate  offenses.  Many  were  fined  and  impris- 
oned, and  one  hundred  and  seven  were  deported  during  his 
term  of  office. 

I  had  a  long  conference  with  Prince  Ito  in  Tokyo.  I 
shall  not  attempt  to  give  a  full  account  of  that  conversa- 
tion. While  it  was  private,  he  knew  that  I  was  seeking 
information  for  public  use,  and  gave  me  full  liberty  to  quote 
him.  He  spoke  excellent  English  and  discussed  the  whole 
question  of  Japanese  plans  in  Korea  with  every  appearance 
of  candor.  He  freely  admitted  that  mistakes  had  been 
made,  and  he  lamented  that  many  of  the  Japanese  who  at 
first  went  to  Korea  did  some  regrettable  things;  but  he 
earnestly  expressed  his  desire  to  make  his  country's  rule  a 
real  benefit  to  a  people  who,  he  deeply  felt,  had  never  had 
a  fair  chance.  The  fanatic  who  assassinated  him  did  the 
worst  possible  thing  for  Korea,  for  he  murdered  the  most 
powerful  friend  that  his  countrymen  had  among  the  ruling 
Japanese. 

It  is  significant  that  the  opponents  of  Prince  Ito  in 
Japan  were  of  the  party  which  favored  a  more  drastic 
policy.  This  party  felt  that  Korea  was  the  absolute  prop- 
erty of  Japan,  that  its  prompt  "  Japanization"  was  a  mili- 
tary necessity,  and  that  its  people  were  so  hopelessly  and 
contemptibly  inferior  and  incorrigible  that  as  little  atten- 
tion should  be  paid  to  their  alleged  rights  as  the  United 
States  of  half  a  century  ago  paid  to  the  rights  of  the  American 
Indians.  Prince  Ito,  on  the  contrary,  held  that  the  Ko- 
reans were  capable  of  development,  and  that  it  would  not 


BENEFITS  OF  JAPANESE  RULE  IN  KOREA       357 

only  be  humane  but  to  the  advantage  of  Japan  to  treat 
them  fairly.  The  revolutionary  cabal  in  Manchuria  and 
California  which  planned  and  executed  the  foul  murder  of 
this  enlightened  statesman  weakened  their  own  case  and 
strengthened  the  hands  of  their  enemies,  who  now  ex- 
claimed: "What  encouragement  has  any  Japanese  official 
to  attempt  to  deal  justly  by  the  Koreans  if  he  is  in  danger 
of  being  assassinated  for  his  pains?"  Fortunately,  intelli- 
gent Japanese  know  that  the  crime  was  that  of  a  compara- 
tively small  number  of  reactionaries.  The  majority  of  the 
people  of  Korea  do  not  love  their  alien  rulers,  but  they 
are  not  disposed  to  shoot  those  who  try  to  deal  fairly  by 
them. 

Viscount  Sone,  who  succeeded  Prince  Ito  in  1908,  con- 
tinued the  work  along  the  lines  laid  down  by  his  distin- 
guished predecessor  until  he  was  compelled  by  ill  health  to 
return  to  Japan,  in  the  spring  of  1910.  Lieutenant-General 
Terauchi  was  then  appointed  to  this  responsible  post. 
His  policy  is  discussed  in  other  chapters.  But  criticism  of 
his  stern  militaristic  rule  and  of  the  harsh  police  methods 
that  he  permitted,  or  at  least  acquiesced  in,  should  not  fail 
to  do  justice  to  his  integrity,  his  patriotic  purpose  to  do 
what  he  sincerely  believed  to  be  for  the  best,  his  large  ad- 
ministrative ability,  and  his  vigor  in  carrying  out  and  en- 
larging the  plans  for  public  improvements  inaugurated  by 
Prince  Ito.  Sanitary  ordinances  were  promulgated  and 
enforced.  Water  and  sewerage  systems  were  installed. 
Free  hospitals  and  dispensaries  were  opened  in  the  prin- 
cipal cities.  Railways,  telegraphs,  and  highways  were  ex- 
tended until  the  traveller  can  reach  many  parts  of  the 
country  without  floundering  through  the  alternately  muddy 
and  dusty  ruts  that  were  euphemistically  called  paths. 

Railway  construction  began  under  the  old  Korean  Gov- 
ernment, which  was  persuaded  to  grant  a  concession  to  an 
American  company  to  build  a  line  from  Seoul  to  Chemulpo, 
19.4  miles.  Work  was  begun  in  1899,  but  the  road  was  sold 
to  a  Japanese  company  before  it  was  opened  for  traffic. 
This  company  began,  in  1901,  to  build  a  railroad  from  Seoul 


358  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

to  the  southern  port  of  Fusan,  a  distance  of  274.9  miles, 
which  was  completed  in  1904  and  formally  opened  January 
1,  1905.  The  year  1902  saw  the  beginning  of  the  line  from 
Seoul  northward  to  Wiju,  on  the  Yalu  River,  309.7  miles. 
The  work  was  started  as  an  undertaking  of  the  Korean 
Government  through  French  engineers;  but  soon  after  the 
outbreak  of  the  Russia-Japan  War  it  was  taken  over  by 
the  Japanese,  who  made  it  a  part  of  their  trunk  line  running 
the  entire  length  of  the  country  from  Fusan  to  Wiju,  a 
distance  of  584.6  miles.  The  lightly  constructed  narrow- 
gauge  line  from  the  Yalu  River  to  Mukden  was  changed  to 
a  solidly  ballasted  broad-gauge,  and  the  Yalu  was  spanned 
by  a  noble  bridge,  which  was  opened  with  elaborate  cere- 
monies November  3,  1911,  and  through  service  established. 
One  may  now  travel  from  Tokyo,  Japan,  to  Fusan,  Korea, 
in  thirty-six  hours,  including  the  eight-hour  ferry  across 
Korea  Strait;  from  Fusan  to  Seoul  in  eleven  hours;  from 
Seoul  to  Wiju  in  fourteen  hours;  and  from  Wiju  to  Mukden 
hi  nine  hours;  in  other  words,  from  Tokyo  to  Mukden  in 
seventy  hours. 

Of  several  branch  lines  that  have  since  been  built,  the 
most  important  is  the  one  from  Seoul,  one  hundred  and 
fifty  miles  northeastward  to  the  port  of  Gensan.  It  did 
not  offer  such  early  commercial  business  as  the  main  north- 
and-south  lines,  for  while  it  traverses  some  fertile  valleys 
it  also  crosses  a  mountainous  and  sparsely  populated  region. 
But  its  administrative  and  military  importance  is  very 
great,  and  the  Japanese  were  jubilant  when  the  road  was 
officially  proclaimed  open  for  traffic  September  16,  1914. 

Over  a  thousand  miles  of  railway  are  now  in  operation 
in  Korea.  All  are  owned  by  the  government  and  have  the 
standard  gauge  of  four  feet  eight  and  a  half  inches.  About 
10,000  men  are  employed,  of  whom  approximately  three- 
fifths  are  Japanese  and  two-fifths  Koreans.  The  equip- 
ment is  modern,  and  the  service  reasonably  good.  It  will 
be  noted  that,  with  the  exception  of  the  short  line  from 
Seoul  to  Chemulpo,  all  the  railroad  building  in  Korea  has 
been  done  by  the  Japanese.  Nor  is  this  all,  for  they  have 


BENEFITS  OF  JAPANESE  RULE  IN  KOREA       359 

made  over  fifteen  hundred  miles  of  graded  highways,  and 
are  adding  new  ones  every  year.  They  are  therefore  en- 
titled to  the  full  measure  of  credit  for  the  inestimable  ad- 
vantages which  these  improved  facilities  for  travel  and 
transportation  have  brought  to  Korea. 

Diligent  efforts  were  also  made  to  bring  order  out  of  chaos 
in  land  titles  and  boundaries.  Surveys  were  made  and 
submitted  to  local  committees  of  investigation.  If  a  Ko- 
rean who  claimed  ownership  of  a  piece  of  property  felt 
aggrieved  by  the  decision  of  a  committee,  he  could  appeal 
to  a  higher  committee  composed  of  the  Administrative 
Superintendent  as  chairman,  three  judges,  and  six  officials 
of  the  Government-General  and  Land  Investigation  Bureau. 
It  is  true  that  the  poor  peasant  was  seldom  able  to  invoke 
his  legal  rights  effectively;  but  it  is  hard  in  any  land  for 
the  best  of  laws  to  afford  adequate  protection  to  ignorant 
and  penniless  men  who  have  neither  the  knowledge  nor  the 
money  to  make  a  contest  in  the  courts. 

Afforestation  is  another  great  boon  which  the  Japanese 
have  brought  to  Korea.  Millions  of  young  trees  were  set 
out  on  the  bare  hillsides,  and  April  3  was  officially  desig- 
nated as  Arbor  Day,  on  which  the  Koreans,  and  especially 
school  children,  were  urged  to  set  out  trees,  which  the  gov- 
ernment furnished.  This  was  a  most  wise  and  enlightened 
measure  to  restore  the  fertility  of  the  soil,  check  the  ravages 
of  floods,  and  provide  the  next  generation  with  the  fuel  and 
lumber  which  the  country  now  so  sorely  lacks. 

The  far-sighted  policy  of  the  administration  was  also 
manifested  in  its  intelligent  recognition  of  the  fact  that  the 
Koreans  are  chiefly  an  agricultural  people,  that  their  farm- 
ing operations  were  crude  in  the  extreme,  and  that  their 
prosperity  and  the  resultant  prosperity  of  the  country  would 
be  enormously  increased  by  teaching  a  better  system.  "  In 
order  to  accomplish  this  purpose,"  wrote  Governor-General 
Terauchi,  "I  planned  the  extension  and  creation  of  organs 
for  encouraging  agriculture  and  introducing  improved  agri- 
cultural methods.  Besides  the  Model  Agricultural  Station 
at  Suwon,  the  central  organ,  I  caused  the  establishment  of 


360  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

two  branches,  one  at  Taiku  and  the  other  at  Pyongyang. 
For  sericulture,  another  branch  was  established  at  Yongsan 
near  Seoul;  for  cotton  cultivation,  one  at  Mokpo;  and  for 
horticulture,  one  at  Tukto  near  Seoul,  and  another  at 
Gensan.  Besides  these,  I  caused  the  establishment  of 
nurseries  in  all  the  provinces,  charged  with  the  investiga- 
tion of  all  matters  relating  to  agriculture,  examinations  and 
tests  of  agricultural  products,  fertilizers  and  so  forth, 
giving  instruction  hi  improved  agricultural  methods  and 
distribution  of  seeds  and  seedlings.  I  also  caused  sericul- 
tural  schools  and  agricultural  schools  to  be  established,  the 
former  in  many  places,  and  the  latter  in  important  local 
centres.  Further,  I  appointed  a  large  number  of  experts 
to  the  central  and  provincial  offices  to  teach  and  guide  Ko- 
reans hi  general  agricultural  industry,  sericulture,  stock- 
breeding,  irrigation  and  so  forth.  I  also  occasionally  issued 
special  instructions  with  regard  to  the  cultivation  of  rice 
and  upland  cotton,  sericultural  industry  and  stock-breeding, 
and  showed  methods  to  be  pursued  in  effecting  improve- 
ment and  obtaining  increased  crops.  Finally,  in  order  to 
encourage  the  general  agricultural  industry,  I  abolished,  in 
1912,  export  duties  on  rice,  cotton,  silk-cocoons,  and  many 
other  agricultural  products."  l 

Large  credit  is  due  Viscount  Terauchi  for  this  beneficent 
work.  Continued  improvement,  too,  was  made  in  the 
character  of  the  Japanese  population  in  Korea.  Most  of 
the  soldiers  who  fought  in  the  Russia-Japan  War  were  en- 
couraged to  return  to  Japan  when  their  terms  of  enlistment 
expired.  The  adventurers  who  had  flocked  in  at  the  close 
of  the  war  found  the  changed  conditions  less  favorable 
to  them  and  began  to  go  back  to  their  native  land,  and  the 
Japanese  who  came  in  their  place  were  of  a  distinctly  better 
class. 

When  Viscount  Terauchi  became  Prime  Minister  of  the 
Empire,  in  1916,  he  was  succeeded  in  the  Governor-General- 
ship of  Korea  by  Field-Marshal  Viscount  Hasegawa,  an- 
other able  soldier  and  administrator,  and  he  carried  on  the 

1  Report  to  the  Throne,  1914. 


BENEFITS  OF  JAPANESE  RULE  IN  KOREA       361 

great  task  of  reconstruction  and  participation  in  a  way 
that  won  general  good-will. 

The  Japanese  officials  whom  I  personally  met  in  Seoul, 
Taiku,  and  Pyongyang,  impressed  me  as  men  of  high  grade 
who  did  not  suffer  in  comparison  with  many  white  colonial 
administrators  hi  similar  positions  in  Asia.  Judge  Noboru 
Watanabe,  Chief  Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court,  is  a  Presby- 
terian elder,  a  Christian  gentleman  of  as  fine  a  type  as  one 
could  find  anywhere.  He  makes  no  secret  of  his  faith,  and 
shortly  after  his  arrival  in  Seoul  he  accepted  a  missionary's 
invitation  to  speak  to  the  large  Korean  congregation  in 
the  Yun  Mot  Kol  Church  in  Seoul.  He  took  as  his  text 
Eph.  4  :  4-6,  and  preached  Christ  with  earnestness  and 
power.  His  wife  is  a  woman  of  like  culture  and  faith,  and 
was  President  of  the  Woman's  Christian  Temperance  Society 
when  their  home  was  in  Yokohama. 

My  interview  with  the  Japanese  Resident  at  Taiku  de- 
veloped some  interesting  facts.  I  found  the  Resident,  Mr. 
Saburo  Hisamidsu,  an  intelligent  man  of  about  fifty  years 
of  age,  who  was  formerly  for  six  years  Consul-General  at 
Seattle,  Washington,  and  who  spoke  English  fluently.  He 
received  me  cordially  and  described  with  enthusiasm  a 
plan  of  having  the  Korean  magistrates  of  the  forty-one 
counties  under  his  jurisdiction  come  to  Taiku  once  a  year 
for  special  instruction.  He  said  that  little  could  be  accom- 
plished by  the  mere  promulgation  of  laws  and  ordinances; 
for  while  many  of  the  Korean  officials  were  well-meaning 
men,  they  were  without  the  knowledge  and  experience  that 
would  enable  them  to  carry  out  the  reforms  which  the 
Japanese  had  inaugurated.  He  stated  that  the  second  an- 
nual conference  of  this  kind  was  then  in  session  and  that  he 
would  be  glad  to  have  me  visit  it.  I  replied  that  it  would 
be  very  gratifying  for  me  to  do  so,  and  he  thereupon  took 
me  to  the  conference.  It  was  held  in  a  long,  low  room,  but 
well-lighted  and  ventilated.  The  Korean  magistrates  were 
seated  at  two  parallel  tables  extending  the  full  length  of  the 
room.  The  name  and  residence  of  each  magistrate  were 
posted  on  a  strip  of  paper  about  six  inches  wide  and  fifteen 


362  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

inches  long  hanging  from  the  edge  of  the  table  in  front  of 
him.  The  Japanese  Resident,  the  Korean  Governor,  a 
Japanese  secretary,  an  interpreter  and  six  Japanese  clerks 
occupied  seats  at  the  head  of  the  room.  The  Korean 
Governor  was  president  of  the  conference,  though  it  was 
evident  that  the  real  leadership  was  with  the  Japanese 
Secretary.  At  the  first  conference  the  year  before,  twenty- 
nine  of  the  forty-one  county  magistrates  were  present, 
and  all  but  three  wore  the  traditional  topknot.  This  year 
forty  of  the  forty-one  magistrates  attended,  and  not  one 
wore  a  topknot,  all  having  their  hair  cut  in  Japanese  style. 
The  magistrates  manifested  keen  interest  in  the  proceed- 
ings and  discussed  the  various  topics  with  animation. 
They  were  apparently  learning  some  useful  things.  Mr. 
Hisamidsu  gave  me  a  copy  of  the  printed  programme  and 
the  rules  and  the  regulations  which  were  being  taught. 
It  was  an  octavo  pamphlet  of  twenty-two  pages,  and  dealt 
with  such  subjects  as  the  making  and  repairing  of  roads, 
the  erection  and  care  of  public  buildings,  the  clerical  staff 
required  in  offices  of  various  grades,  sanitary  rules  and  their 
enforcement,  police  regulations,  etc.  Sample  reports  and 
vouchers  were  given,  and  methods  of  keeping  accounts 
were  explained.  The  conference  was  in  session  eight  days 
and  I  could  readily  see  how  such  instruction  would  increase 
the  intelligence  and  efficiency  of  the  magistrates  who  at- 
tended it.  Koreans  who  accept  office  under  the  Japanese 
are  not  always  popular  with  their  countrymen,  but  these 
Koreans  certainly  became  wiser  magistrates  than  their 
predecessors. 

Some  of  the  acts  which  have  given  offense  to  the  Koreans 
were  inevitable.  It  is  not  possible  for  a  conquering  army  in 
time  of  war  to  sweep  through  a  country  and  not  incur  the 
fear  and  hatred  of  the  native  population ;  and  Japan  had  to 
do  this  twice  within  a  decade.  Moreover,  when  the  Japanese 
took  control  of  Korea,  they  found  one  of  the  worst  and  most 
inefficient  governments  imaginable.  It  would  not  be  easy 
to  exaggerate  the  extremity  of  the  situation.  Save  for  a 
few  local  improvements  which  had  been  made  by  foreigners, 


BENEFITS  OF  JAPANESE  RULE  IN  KOREA       363 

there  were  no  roads,  no  railways,  no  telegraphs,  no  schools 
worthy  of  the  name  (except  mission  schools),  no  justice  in 
the  courts,  no  uniform  currency — practically  nothing  of 
any  kind  that  a  people  need.  The  Japanese  had  to  create 
all  the  external  conditions  of  stable  government  and  civil- 
ized life,  and  to  create  them  against  the  opposition  of  a 
corrupt  and  degenerate  ruling  class  and  the  inherited  inertia 
and  squalor  of  a  people  who  had  so  long  acquiesced  in  mis- 
government  and  injustice  that  they  had  ceased  to  care. 
When  the  energetic  reforms  of  the  Japanese  spurred  them 
out  of  their  indolence  and  apathy  and  made  them  go  to 
work  and  to  clean  up  their  filthy  alleys,  they  were  as  cross 
and  peevish  as  the  slum-dwellers  of  New  York  and  Chicago 
when  sanitary  laws  order  them  to  cease  sweat-shop  work  in 
living  rooms,  to  stop  throwing  garbage  into  the  streets,  and 
to  submit  to  vaccination  and  tenement  inspection.  The 
profligate  official  class  more  or  less  secretly  hated  the  Japa- 
nese and  hoped  for  the  triumph  of  the  Russians  because  the 
Russians  were  not  disposed  to  interfere  so  seriously  with  the 
old  order  and  were  willing  to  let  vicious  magistrates  and 
court  ministers  neglect  and  rob  and  abuse  the  people  pro- 
vided they  recognized  Russian  supremacy.  Russia  in  Korea 
would  have  meant  abundance  of  foreign  gold,  the  continu- 
ance of  profligacy,  misgovernment,  and  filth,  and  in  general 
the  policy  of  laissez-faire.  The  magistrates,  finding  their 
corrupt  practices  interfered  with  and  their  extortionate 
gains  cut  off,  raised  a  loud  outcry,  and  the  swarm  of  para- 
sites who  lounged  about  their  yamens  swelled  the  clamor. 
I  have  referred  in  a  former  chapter  to  the  charges  of 
forced  labor  and  the  seizure  of  property  without  due  com- 
pensation. But  even  these  questions  have  two  sides. 
There  undoubtedly  were  instances  of  great  hardship  to  Ko- 
reans who  were  compelled  to  leave  their  fields  and  to  toil 
on  public  works,  often  at  a  distance  from  their  homes. 
Some  Koreans,  too,  received  little  or  nothing  for  land  which 
they  were  forced  to  surrender.  I  would  not  minimize  this 
gross  injustice.  The  following  letter  from  one  important 
city  describes  a  typical  experience:  "With  the  advent  of 


364  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

many  Japanese,  the  coming  of  the  railroad,  the  confiscation 
of  land  and  houses  by  Japanese  merchants  and  others,  the 
injustice  of  the  Korean  magistrate,  his  apparent  alliance 
with  the  Japanese  to  force  Koreans  to  sell  at  great  loss,  the 
indefiniteness  of  Korean  deeds,  the  lack  of  a  system  for  re- 
cording deeds,  the  high-handed  measures  of  Japanese  and 
French  and  the  Korean  officials,  many  complications  over 
property  questions  arise.  The  Japanese  have  staked  off 
their  purchases,  marking  the  stakes  as  defining  Japanese 
property.  The  railroad  men  have  run  the  line  through 
growing  crops  and  houses,  and  on  either  side  of  it  have 
marked  off  a  large  concession  of  hundreds  of  acres  contain- 
ing the  best  land  and  best  houses  in  the  province.  The 
land  and  four  hundred  houses  have  been  condemned,  and 
the  people  are  ordered  out  by  the  Japanese  and  Korean 
officials  and  told  to  look  to  the  Korean  Government  for 
pay.  They  are  paid  for  their  houses  through  the  Korean 
magistrate,  and  although  not  treated  impartially  are,  on 
the  whole,  paid  a  pretty  fair  compensation.  I  have  not 
heard  of  any  one  having  been  paid  for  land  or  crops,  but 
on  the  contrary,  apparently  reliable  reports  say  that  within 
this  concession  the  magistrate  himself  is  buying  up  land  at 
a  cheap  price  and  selling  it  to  the  Japanese.  The  people 
are  highly  enraged  and  see  no  hope  of  redress.  They  do 
not  understand  what  is  being  done,  cannot  trust  their  own 
officials,  are  being  driven  out  of  house  and  land,  and  lose 
their  crops.  Ignorant  and  helpless,  they  are  the  victims  of 
all  kinds  of  sharpers.  Outside  of  this  '  concession '  also,  the 
Japanese  have  bought  hundreds  of  fields  and  the  French 
have  bought  some.  The  latter  with  high-handed  measures 
forced  the  people  who  had  houses  on  their  property  to  tear 
them  down  under  threats  of  exacting  a  high  rent  for  them. 
This  produced  intense  indignation."  A  letter  from  another 
city  said  that  the  Japanese  were  buying  all  available  land 
sites;  that  they  had  laid  out  a  regular  settlement  with 
broad,  straight  streets,  having  razed  a  whole  Korean  vil- 
lage that  stood  in  the  way,  and  that  they  were  tearing 
down  the  city  wall  to  put  a  street  through. 


BENEFITS  OF  JAPANESE  RULE  IN  KOREA       365 

On  the  other  hand,  it  should  be  borne  in  mind  that  it 
would  have  been  difficult  if  not  impossible  for  the  Japanese 
authorities  to  carry  out  some  of  the  improvements  that  are 
of  large  value  to  the  whole  country,  such  as  roads,  railways, 
sanitation,  etc.,  if  they  had  been  obliged  to  depend  upon 
the  voluntary  labor  of  Korean  peasants,  who  are  admitted 
by  their  warmest  admirers  to  be  lazy  and  shiftless,  and  who, 
even  when  diligent  and  ambitious,  do  not  like  Japanese 
taskmasters.  The  Japanese  claim  that  they  had  no  in- 
tention of  forcing  Koreans  to  labor,  but  that  their  contrac- 
tors were  given  written  and  officially  stamped  requests  for 
so  many  hundred  laborers  to  be  presented  to  Korean  offi- 
cials. The  Korean  magistrates,  however,  understood  these 
"requests"  as  equivalent  to  demands.  Complaints  be- 
came numerous,  and  were  so  well  substantiated  that  an 
order  was  issued  January  6,  1906,  forbidding  railway  con- 
tractors to  apply  to  the  Korean  authorities  for  laborers. 

As  for  land,  every  government  has  the  unquestionable 
and  absolutely  necessary  right  to  take  private  property 
under  the  right  of  eminent  domain.  It  ought  to  pay  a  fair 
price  for  it.  The  Japanese  affirm  that  they  tried  to  do  this, 
but  that  the  Korean  magistrates,  through  whom  the  ar- 
rangements were  made,  pocketed  the  money.  Japanese 
officials,  not  knowing  the  Korean  language,  were  obliged 
to  deal  through  native  interpreters  and  "go-betweens," 
who  were  not  always  honest.  If  a  piece  of  property  was  to 
be  bought,  the  "go-between"  might  take  it  for  a  quarter 
of  its  value  under  threat  of  Japanese  vengeance,  collect  full 
price  from  the  Japanese  purchaser,  and  steal  the  difference. 
Land  titles,  too,  were  in  hopeless  confusion,  as  missionaries 
and  mission  boards  knew  to  their  cost,  and  it  was  not  always 
easy  to  discriminate  between  state  property,  which  the 
government  had  a  right  to  use,  and  private  property,  for 
which  owners  were  entitled  to  compensation.  These  con- 
siderations do  not  wholly  excuse  the  Japanese,  for  they  did 
not  always  pay  fair  prices,  and  they  knew  the  bad  character 
of  the  native  magistrates  and  "go-betweens";  but  it  is 
only  just  to  recognize  the  difficulties  of  the  situation. 


366  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

The  annual  reports  of  the  Government-General,  entitled 
Reforms  and  Progress  in  Korea,  are  very  interesting  reading. 
They  describe  what  has  been  done  and  what  is  projected 
under  such  headings  as  "Administration,"  "Judiciary," 
"Peace  and  Order,"  "Finance,"  "Currency,"  "Banking," 
"Government  Undertakings,"  "Civil  Engineering  Works," 
"Communications,"  "Commerce,"  "Agriculture,"  "Trade 
and  Industry,"  "Mining,"  "Forestry,"  "Fishery,"  "Sani- 
tation," and  "Education."  Appendices,  tables  of  statistics, 
maps,  and  illustrations  make  these  reports  a  valuable  com- 
pendium of  Japanese  efforts  in  Korea.  The  Japanese,  like 
Americans,  naturally  put  their  best  foot  forward  in  reports 
that  are  issued  for  the  outside  world.  The  most  favorable 
construction  is  placed  upon  their  acts.  Highly  virtuous 
language  is  employed  in  setting  forth  their  intentions. 
Unpleasant  things  are  as  skilfully  minimized  as  malaria  and 
mosquitoes  are  in  the  glowing  accounts  of  summer-resort 
proprietors  in  the  United  States.  But  after  making  due 
allowances  for  this  common  characteristic  of  all  such  writ- 
ings, the  general  fact  remains  that  the  Japanese  have  done 
wonders  in  Korea.  Grant  that  many  of  the  reforms  may 
be  found  in  a  well-regulated  penal  colony,  and  that  a  cita- 
tion of  them  does  not  meet  all  the  questions  that  may  be 
fairly  raised.  The  reforms  are  none  the  less  valuable  and 
praiseworthy. 

The  Japanese  have  changed  the  names  of  places  in  a 
way  that  appears  odd  to  a  foreigner.  The  renaming  has 
some  justification,  for  a  number  of  the  names  that  have 
become  familiar  to  English  readers  are  crude  attempts  at 
phonetic  spellings  of  what  foreigners  understood  to  be  Ko- 
rean pronunciation.  "Coria"  was  the  name  that  the  early 
Portuguese  sailors  gave  to  the  country,  a  corruption  of 
"Korai,"  the  name  of  one  of  the  native  states  into  which 
the  peninsula  was  long  divided.  Europe  took  this  name 
from  the  Portuguese,  the  French  rendering  it  La  Core"e, 
and  the  English  Corea  or  Korea.  The  people  themselves 
for  many  centuries  have  called  their  country  Chosen  (The 
Morning  Calm).  As  this  is  the  real  name  of  the  country, 


New  Offices  of  the  Government-General,  Seoul. 
To  be  completed  in  1924  at  a  cost  of  yen  3,000,000. 


Telephone  Exchange  in  the  Post-Office,  Seoul. 


Post-Office,  Seoul. 
Completed  in  1915. 


BENEFITS  OF  JAPANESE  RULE  IN  KOREA       367 

the  Japanese,  properly  enough,  have  adopted  it.  They  are 
not  to  be  blamed  either  for  rejecting  imported  European 
names  and  foreign  spellings  of  native  sounds  that  are  alien 
to  Asia,  and  substituting  a  Japanese  spelling  or  restoring  a 
native  name  which  foreigners  had  arbitrarily  changed. 
The  new  spellings  are  said  to  represent  the  Japanese  pro- 
nunciation of  the  Chinese  characters  which  the  cities  have 
long  borne.  The  Japanese  did  not,  therefore  change  the 
names  but  merely  their  English  form.  When,  however, 
they  attempt  to  give  an  English  phonetic  version  of  their 
pronunciation  of  a  Chinese  character  applied  to  a  Korean 
locality,  the  result  is  sometimes  startling  and  confusing  to  a 
traveller.  I  do  not  profess  to  be  an  authority  on  the  lan- 
guages of  China,  Japan,  and  Korea,  and  consequently  can 
only  express  my  ignorant  and  humble  admiration  for  the 
combination  of  Asiatic  loyalty  and  linguistic  agility  which 
have  transformed  Pyongyang  into  Heijo,  Seoul  into  Keijo, 
Songdo  into  Kaijo,  and  Chemulpo  into  Jinsen.  The  new 
nomenclature  is  gradually  becoming  familiar,  although  there 
will  be  some  confusion  until  corrected  maps  become  availa- 
ble to  Western  readers. 

The  fact  is  that  the  Japanese  have  made  Korea  an  integral 
part  of  their  empire,  and  that  they  are  reorganizing  every 
phase  of  it  in  accordance  with  their  national  characteristics 
and  methods.  In  pursuance  of  this  policy  of  assimilation, 
the  imperial  government  in  1916  gave  open  sanction  to  in- 
termarriages by  betrothing  Princess  Nashimoto,  a  daughter 
of  a  Prince  of  the  Japanese  imperial  family,  to  Prince  Yi, 
Jr.,  who  was  Crown  Prince  when  his  elder  brother  was  Em- 
peror. The  wedding  took  place,  January  21,  1919.  With 
the  encouragement  of  such  an  example,  marriages  of  Japa- 
nese and  Koreans  are  becoming  more  frequent  than  formerly. 
It  is  doubtful  whether  such  unions  will  become  general,  at 
least  for  a  considerable  period,  for  the  rather  matter-of-fact 
reason  that  Japanese  men  deem  their  own  countrywomen 
far  more  attractive  and  congenial  than  Korean  women, 
whose  physical  charms,  it  must  be  confessed,  average  con- 
siderably lower  than  those  of  Japanese  women. 


368  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

The  Japanese  are  making  efforts,  too,  to  win  the  support 
of  prominent  Koreans.  Men  who  show  a  disposition  to  be 
loyal  to  the  government  are  given  such  positions  as  they 
are  deemed  fitted  to  occupy.  Quite  a  number  of  the  provin- 
cial governors  and  local  officials  of  various  grades  are  native 
Koreans.  There  is  usually  a  Japanese  "resident"  close 
by  to  "advise"  them,  but  the  Korean  enjoys  the  title  and 
show  of  office,  at  any  rate. 

October  9,  1910,  Governor-General  Terauchi,  in  the  name 
of  the  Emperor  of  Japan,  formally  created  a  Korean  peerage 
of  the  Empire,  and  conferred  the  rank  of  marquis  upon  six 
Koreans,  count  upon  three,  viscount  upon  twenty-two,  and 
baron  upon  forty-five.  The  function  was  made  an  impos- 
ing one  with  all  the  ceremony  that  was  calculated  to  make 
a  deep  impression  upon  the  new  peers  and  upon  their  coun- 
trymen. 

While  Korean  children  are  urged  to  attend  the  free  public 
schools,  to  which  we  have  referred  in  another  chapter, 
promising  young  men  are  encouraged  to  go  to  Japan  for 
collegiate  and  technical  courses,  and  Korean  students  may 
now  be  found  in  the  Imperial  University  and  in  a  variety  of 
medical,  industrial,  normal,  and  other  schools.  These  young 
men  naturally  imbibe  a  good  deal  of  Japanese  sentiment, 
and  return  to  their  own  land  to  become  capable  instruments 
of  the  Government-General. 

Many  of  the  Japanese  in  Korea  shrink  from  the  full  ap- 
plication of  the  policy  of  equality  and  assimilation.  "  Birds 
of  a  feather  flock  together"  there  as  everywhere  else,  and 
the  Japanese  naturally  live  in  sections  which  are  distinct 
from  the  Korean  town,  and  have  their  own  clubs,  schools, 
churches,  and  social  life.  The  average  Japanese  considers 
himself  superior  to  the  Korean  and  with  reason.  Making 
all  due  allowance  for  exceptions  and  for  the  rapid  levelling-up 
process  that  is  now  going  on  as  the  result  of  improved  gov- 
ernmental, economic,  educational,  and  religious  conditions, 
the  present  fact  is  indubitable  that  the  Japanese  do  represent 
a  higher  civilization  and  culture  in  Korea,  and  they  are  prone 
to  act  accordingly  in  their  relations  with  "the  natives." 


BENEFITS  OF  JAPANESE  RULE  IN  KOREA       369 

The  latter  are  sensitively  quick  to  see  this  and  to  feel  hurt 
by  it.  It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that  in  most  places 
the  social  cleavage  is  marked.  That  cleavage  is  notoriously 
wide  between  Americans  and  Filipinos  in  the  Philippine 
Islands,  in  spite  of  the  earnest  efforts  of  the  Governor- 
General  in  Manila  and  the  beneficent  desires  of  the  ad- 
ministration in  Washington.  How  long  was  it  before  the 
English,  Scotch,  Welsh  and  Irish  peoples  were  welded  into 
a  single  nationality  in  common  feeling  and  purpose?  Are 
the  Irish  welded  in  yet?  So  in  Korea,  considerable  time 
must  pass  before  the  Japanese  and  Koreans  are  really  one 
people. 

Meantime,  we  have  the  impression  that  the  Government- 
General  is  honestly  trying  to  develop  the  policy  of  assimila- 
tion as  fast  as  it  deems  practicable. 

To  his  "  Instructions  to  the  Japanese  Residents  in  Korea," 
shortly  after  his  arrival  in  1910,  Viscount  Terauchi  added 
these  wise  words:  "The  aim  and  purpose  of  the  annexation 
is  to  consolidate  the  bonds  of  two  countries,  removing  all 
causes  for  the  territorial  and  national  discriminations  neces- 
sarily existing  as  separate  powers,  so  as  perfectly  to  promote 
the  mutual  welfare  and  happiness  of  the  two  peoples  hi  gen- 
eral. Consequently,  should  the  Japanese  people  regard  it  as 
a  result  of  the  conquest  of  a  weak  country  by  a  stronger  one, 
and  speak  and  act  under  such  illusion  in  an  overbearing  and 
undignified  manner,  they  would  go  contrary  to  the  spirit  in 
which  the  present  step  has  been  taken.  Japanese  settlers 
in  Korea  seem  to  have  considered  themselves  to  be  living  in 
a  foreign  land  and  have  often  fallen  into  the  mistake  of  hold- 
ing themselves  as  superiors  at  the  .expense  of  the  people  of 
the  country.  It  is  opportune  that  things  have  now  as- 
sumed a  new  aspect.  Let  them  take  this  opportunity  to 
change  their  ideas  and  attitude  toward  the  people  of  Korea. 
Let  them  always  bear  in  mind  that  they  are  our  brothers 
and  treat  them  with  sympathy  and  friendship ;  and  in  pur- 
suing individual  avocations  by  mutual  help  and  co-opera- 
tion, both  peoples  should  contribute  their  shares  to  the 
progress  and  growth  of  the  whole  Empire." 


370  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

Intelligent  opinion  in  Japan  is  supporting  this  policy,  as 
witness  the  following  extract  from  an  article  in  a  leading 
Tokyo  newspaper,  entitled  "Assimilation  Through  Love 
and  Sympathy."  "Koreans,"  said  the  writer,  "are  often 
spoken  of  as  being  a  people  who  deserve  no  sympathy. 
But  what  is  it  that  has  made  them  so  crooked  in  thought, 
perfidious,  deceitful,  and  treacherous?  Ages  of  maladmin- 
istration, and  in  that  respect  they  indeed  deserve  all  sym- 
pathy. True,  there  are  incorrigible  Koreans  who  would 
spurn  sympathy;  on  them  force  may  properly  be  used.  It 
is  indeed  unfortunate  that  unscrupulous  adventurers  have 
gone  to  Korea  and  by  their  evil  conduct  given  a  bad  and 
wrong  impression  of  the  Japanese  people  as  a  whole;  but 
such  men  are  being  dealt  with  as  they  deserve,  and  justice 
is  being  administered  as  never  before." 

The  foreigner  who  indiscriminately  denounces  the  Japa- 
nese may  discreetly  remember  that  the  alleged  Christian 
nations  have  not  set  Japan  a  very  good  example  in  dealing 
with  subject  races.  To  say  nothing  of  French  harshness  in 
Madagascar,  and  Spanish  oppression  in  Cuba  and  the 
Philippines,  is  any  American  proud  of  his  country's  treat- 
ment of  the  Indians  for  two  hundred  years  after  the  white 
man  came  ?  If  there  is  such  an  American,  his  spirit  will  be 
chastened  by  reading  some  of  the  voluminous  literature  on 
the  subject,  including  Helen  Hunt  Jackson's  A  Century  of 
Dishonor.  And  what  about  the  flagrant  injustice  of  our 
treatment  of  the  Chinese  and  Japanese  on  the  Pacific 
coast?  As  for  the  Philippines,  while  the  executive  de- 
partment of  the  American  Government  has  done  admirably 
and  we  "point  with  pride"  to  what  has  been  accomplished, 
it  was  a  painfully  long  time  before  Congress  could  be  in- 
duced to  pass  some  laws  which  meant  simple  justice  to  the 
Filipinos,  and  Mr.  Taft,  when  Governor-General,  publicly 
lamented  the  brutalities  committed  by  some  dissolute 
Americans  in  the  archipelago.  Can  we  reasonably  expect 
Japan  to  do  better  by  the  Koreans  than  many  Western 
nations  have  done  by  their  conquered  peoples? 

I  am  not  excusing  the  Japanese.    Faults  should  not  be 


BENEFITS  OF  JAPANESE  RULE  IN  KOREA       371 

condoned  because  other  people  commit  them.  I  am  simply 
reminding  the  reader  of  the  magnitude  and  difficulty  of 
their  task,  and  that  any  disposition  to  be  unduly  censorious 
in  judging  them  should  be  tempered  by  a  frank  recognition 
of  the  difficulties  of  the  situation.  Grant  that  they  have 
not  always  acted  in  accordance  with  the  standards  of 
Christian  altruism;  that  they  have  made  political  and  mili- 
tary necessity  the  first  consideration;  that  some  of  their 
methods  have  been  ruthless  and  that  they  have  sometimes 
made  the  process  of  readjustment  needlessly  trying  to  the 
helpless  natives.  But  let  us  remember  that  there  never 
was  a  dirtier  Augean  stable  to  be  cleansed  than  that  which 
they  found  hi  the  land  of  The  Morning  Calm,  and  that  the 
mess  required  decisive  measures.  The  historian  of  the  next 
generation  will  be  in  better  position  to  take  an  impartial 
view  than  men  of  to-day,  who  are  in  danger  of  having  their 
judgment  warped  by  the  personal  feelings  that  have  been 
aroused. 

Trying  to  look  at  the  matter  as  fairly  as  possible  now,  I 
believe  that  the  balance  inclines  heavily  in  favor  of  the 
Japanese.  I  do  not  defend  some  of  the  things  that  they 
have  done.  I  sympathize  with  the  Koreans.  They  would 
be  unworthy  of  respect  if  they  did  not  prefer  their  national 
freedom.  One  can  understand  why  the  injustice  of  their 
own  magistrates  seemed  less  irksome  than  the  stern  justice 
of  alien  conquerors.  Nevertheless  I  confess  to  sympathy 
also  with  the  Japanese.  They  were  forced  to  occupy  Korea 
to  prevent  a  Russian  occupation,  which  would  have  men- 
aced their  own  independence  as  a  nation.  They  are  now 
struggling  with  their  burden  against  heavy  odds,  with  lim- 
ited financial  resources,  and  against  the  dislike  and  opposi- 
tion of  Koreans,  Russians,  Chinese,  and  most  of  the  foreign- 
ers in  the  Far  East.  While  we  should  as  frankly  discuss 
their  methods  as  we  would  those  of  our  own  country  in 
similar  circumstances,  as  I  have  done  in  other  chapters  of 
this  book,  we  should  avoid  the  error  of  assuming  that  we 
can  help  the  Koreans  by  unjust  abuse  of  their  rulers. 

It  would  be  narrow  and  unscientific  to  estimate  the  his- 


372  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

tone  value  of  the  Japanese  occupation  of  Korea  solely  by 
incidental  defects  of  method  or  spirit,  just  as  it  would  be 
to  protest  that  a  transcontinental  line  of  railway  should 
not  have  been  built  because  the  right-of-way  injured  some 
man's  property,  or  a  brutal  foreman  committed  acts  of 
violence  against  his  person  or  family.  We  should  view  a 
movement  in  historic  perspective,  deprecating  indeed  the 
wrongs  of  the  people  concerned,  and  visiting  full  blame 
upon  those  who  unnecessarily  caused  them,  but  recognizing 
nevertheless  that  results,  even  when  achieved  by  imper- 
fect human  instruments,  are  to  be  measured  rather  by 
their  worth  to  the  country  and  the  world  than  by  the  follies 
and  crimes  of  some  of  the  men  who  had  a  part  in  the  effort. 
Looking  at  the  question  of  Japanese  administration  as  a 
whole,  we  must  bear  in  mind  that  there  are  a  large  way  and 
a  small  way  of  viewing  it. 

The  large  way  is  to  note  that  in  the  evolution  of  the  race 
and  the  development  of  the  plan  of  God,  the  time  had  come 
when  it  was  for  the  best  interests  of  the  world  and  for  the 
welfare  of  the  Koreans  themselves  that  Korea  should  come 
under  the  tutelage  of  Japan.  All  great  movements  in  this 
world,  however  beneficent  in  general  character  and  ulti- 
mate purpose,  involve  human  agents  with  their  full  share 
of  human  infirmities.  Some  of  these  agents  are  apt  to  be 
selfish,  some  greedy,  some  cruel,  some  lustful.  The  de- 
velopment of  a  movement,  therefore,  is  certain  to  be  at- 
tended by  many  individual  acts  that  are  wrong.  Historic 
illustrations  will  at  once  occur  to  every  student.  The 
Protestant  Reformation  in  Europe  was  not  free  from  bigotry 
and  passion  on  the  side  of  the  Reformers.  The  abolition  of 
slavery  in  the  United  States  was  accomplished  in  a  war 
whose  moral  majesty  was  tarnished  by  many  acts  of  cruelty 
and  passion;  and  it  is  an  unpleasant  chapter  in  American 
history  that  records  the  nefarious  acts  of  Northern  "carpet- 
baggers" in  the  South  after  the  war.  It  was  clearly  for 
the  best  interests  of  Africa  and  the  world  that  Great  Britain 
should  overthrow  the  corrupt  and  reactionary  oligarchy 
that  was  masquerading  under  the  name  of  a  republic  in  the 


BENEFITS  OF  JAPANESE  RULE  IN  KOREA       373 

Transvaal;  but  England  did  many  things  in  that  war  and 
in  the  months  following  which  her  best  people  do  not  like 
to  remember. 

The  small  way  of  considering  a  historical  question  is  to 
fix  our  attention  on  such  acts  of  individuals  or  even  on  the 
policies  of  men  temporarily  in  official  position.  We  should 
not  hastily  conclude  that,  because  a  period  of  transition  is 
turbulent  and  many  of  its  agents  are  blundering  or  un- 
scrupulous, the  movement  itself  is  bad.  It  is  right  that  we 
should  plainly  and  firmly  protest  against  Japanese  acts  of 
injustice  to  the  helpless  Koreans,  right  to  do  everything  in 
our  power  to  remedy  injustice;  but  it  would  be  grievously 
wrong  to  act  on  the  supposition  that  it  is  not  best  for  Japan 
to  be  in  Korea  and  to  antagonize  the  general  policy  of  re- 
construction. We  sympathize  with  the  natural  aspirations 
of  any  people  for  an  independent  nationality;  but  the  Ko- 
reans could  not  be  independent  anyway  under  present  con- 
ditions in  the  Far  East,  and  they  are  far  better  off  under 
the  Japanese  than  they  were  under  their  own  rulers  or 
than  they  would  have  been  under  the  Russians.  Nothing 
could  be  worse  for  Korea  than  plunging  her  back  into  the 
abyss  of  corruption,  weakness,  and  oppression  of  the  old 
regime.  A  new  order  is  being  established.  The  Koreans 
are  being  given  better  opportunities  for  advancement. 
The  Japanese  are  the  political  and  economic  agents  through 
whom  this  uplifting  movement  is  being  developed.  They 
have  made  some  mistakes  and  they  will  doubtless  make 
more;  but  on  the  whole  their  work  in  Korea  has  been 
beneficent  in  many  ways.  Of  course  it  is  hard  for  the  Ko- 
reans, and  for  their  foreign  friends  who  came  to  the  coun- 
try in  the  old  days,  to  adapt  themselves  to  the  changed 
conditions;  but  there  is  no  alternative,  and  it  is  the  part  of 
wisdom  ungrudgingly  to  recognize  the  inescapable  situation. 

As  time  passes  the  Koreans  are  gradually  accepting  the 
new  conditions,  or  at  least  submitting  to  them.  There  are 
indeed  men  who  are  restive  under  Japanese  rule,  and  who 
intrigue  against  it.  It  would  be  expecting  too  much  of 
human  nature  to  assume  that  millions  of  people  would 


374  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

unanimously  agree  to  the  extinction  of  national  indepen- 
dence and  identity.  But  an  increasing  number  of  Koreans 
are  acquiescing  in  the  inevitable.  Moreover,  they  begin 
to  appreciate  some  of  the  advantages  which  the  Japanese 
have  made  available.  Roads,  railways,  sanitation,  hos- 
pitals, a  stable  currency,  and  public  works  of  various  kinds 
are  benefiting  Koreans  as  well  as  Japanese.  The  Korean 
who  philosophically  accepts  the  new  conditions  finds  that 
he  can  get  steadier  and  more  remunerative  employment 
than  he  could  in  the  old  days  of  native  rule.  He  can  wear 
better  clothing  and  have  a  more  comfortable  house.  His 
alien  masters  are,  as  a  rule,  more  just  with  him  than  the 
native  officials  were  prior  to  Japanese  occupation.  If  he 
is  wronged  by  one  of  his  own  countrymen,  he  is  more  apt 
to  get  justice  hi  the  courts  without  bribing  an  official  than 
he  was  in  the  old  days  of  Korean  "independence." 

Even  time-honored  customs  are  beginning  to  yield.  The 
quaint  topknot  and  horsehair  hat  are  disappearing.  The 
flowing  white  robes  are  gradually  giving  way  to  Japanese 
costume.  The  leisurely  gentleman,  proud  of  his  effemi- 
nacy, the  huge  horn  spectacles  which  proclaimed  him  a 
scholar,  and  the  long  finger-nails  which  proved  him  an  idler, 
is  finding  himself  less  an  object  of  admiration  in  a  busier 
and  more  practical  era,  in  which  achievement  counts  and 
only  the  fittest  can  survive. 

The  Japanese  might  wisely  encourage  this  tendency,  not 
only  by  making  the  period  of  transition  as  easy  as  possible 
for  Koreans  who  are  disposed  to  acquiesce  in  the  changed 
conditions,  but  by  avoiding  unnecessary  severity  in  dealing 
with  those  who  are  still  sore  of  heart  as  they  brood  over  their 
country's  subjugation.  There  are  indeed  limits  to  prudent 
indifference.  But  the  policy  of  sternly  punishing  every 
political  suspect  fans  the  revolutionary  spirit  into  flame  and 
increases  rather  than  diminishes  the  possibilities  of  assassi- 
nation, as  the  history  of  Russia  proves.  He  is  a  wise  ruler, 
as  he  is  a  wise  parent,  who  knows  when  it  is  better  good- 
naturedly  to  ignore  certain  manifestations  than  it  is  to 
make  a  fuss  about  them.  Criticism  of  a  government,  like 


BENEFITS  OF  JAPANESE  RULE  IN  KOREA       375 

steam,  is  seldom  dangerous  when  it  is  allowed  free  vent  in 
the  open  air.  It  is  when  repressed  that  it  develops  ex- 
plosive power.  Not  only  Japan  but  all  Western  nations 
which  govern  subject  peoples  may  wisely  keep  in  mind  the 
noble  ideal  expressed  in  Queen  Victoria's  Proclamation  re- 
garding India  in  1858:  "It  is  our  earnest  desire  to  admin- 
ister its  [i.  e.,  the  Indian]  government  for  the  benefit  of  all 
our  subjects  resident  therein.  In  their  prosperity  will  be 
our  strength;  in  their  contentment  our  security;  and  in 
their  gratitude  our  best  reward." 

The  Koreans  are  rapidly  acquiring  the  qualities  that  fit 
a  people  for  intelligent  self-determination.  If  Japan,  as 
many  Japanese  desire,  is  to  be  regarded  as  the  Great 
Britain  of  the  Far  East,  is  Korea  to  be  to  her  an  inte- 
grally related  Scotland,  a  contented  and  self-governing  but 
intensely  loyal  Canada,  or  a  turbulent  and  revolutionary 
Ireland?  The  effort  to  solve  this  problem  is  not  hampered 
by  the  kind  of  religious  animosities  that  have  split  the 
Irish  into  hostile  factions.  The  Japanese  have  a  relatively 
clear  field  for  a  wise  and  conciliatory  policy  that  will  weld 
the  peninsula  and  the  island  empire  into  a  compact  nation 
which  shall  again  illustrate  the  saying  that  in  union  there 
is  strength. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 
THE  SOCIAL  AND  MORPHINE  EVILS 

THE  moral  conditions  in  Japan  have  long  been  of  an  un- 
pleasant character.  Although  improvement  has  been  made 
in  recent  years,  licentiousness  is  still  regarded  as  a  com- 
paratively venial  offense,  and  it  involves  less  reproach  both 
to  men  and  women  than  in  any  other  country  in  the  world 
which  lays  claim  to  civilized  standing.  Ten  and  three- 
tenths  per  cent  of  the  births  are  illegitimate.  The  state- 
ment of  a  recent  writer  that  he  has  "no  hesitation  in  de- 
scribing the  morals  of  Japanese  people  to  be  on  the  whole 
greatly  superior  to  those  of  Western  nations,"  is  simply 
pathetic.  A  man  who  can  visit  Japan  and  carry  away  such 
an  impression  is  beyond  argument.  Murphy's  The  Social 
Evil  in  Japan  describes  the  true  situation  with  startling 
clearness.  It  is  not  an  agreeable  book  to  read,  but  its  re- 
liability is  indisputable.  The  author  wrote  out  of  the  per- 
sonal knowledge  that  he  had  painfully  acquired  in  a  strug- 
gle of  many  years  to  save  multitudes  of  Japanese  girls  from 
the  virtual  slavery  of  a  prostitute's  life. 

The  alleged  easier  lot  of  the  Japanese  courtesan,  as  com- 
pared with  that  of  her  American  and  European  sisters,  is 
largely  imaginary.  It  is  true  that  she  does  not  suffer  the 
same  sense  of  shame  and  guilt,  and  that  she  is  not  so  com- 
pletely ostracized.  But  she  is  the  victim  of  the  same  kind 
of  maltreatment  from  brutal  keepers;  she  is  involved  in  the 
same  debts  from  which  she  can  seldom  extricate  herself;  she 
contracts  the  same  foul  diseases ;  and,  until  missionaries  took 
up  the  struggle  in  her  behalf,  she  had  little  better  chance  of 
escaping  from  her  keepers  and  returning  to  a  normal  life 
before  she  was  irretrievably  wrecked  in  health.  Young  and 
ignorant  girls  were  persuaded  or  forced  to  register  as  pros- 

376 


THE  SOCIAL  AND  MORPHINE  EVILS  377 

titutes  at  the  police  stations,  and  were  then  assigned  to  the 
segregated  districts.  They  were  required  to  fulfil  the  con- 
tract which  they  thoughtlessly  signed,  and,  if  they  man- 
aged to  escape,  the  police  often  helped  to  capture  them  and 
send  them  back. 

Many  Japanese  do  not  appear  to  have  a  conscience  on 
the  subject  of  impurity.  They  are  unmoral  rather  than 
immoral,  and  they  frequently  stare  with  ill-concealed  sur- 
prise when  they  are  told  that  the  common  licentiousness  is 
wrong.  Mr.  Galen  W.  Fisher,  Secretary  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A. 
in  Tokyo,  vouches  for  the  statement  that  the  principal  of  a 
large  normal  school  said  that  he  not  only  patronized  houses 
of  ill  fame  himself,  but  that  he  advised  his  teachers  to  do 
so,  and  that  he  even  gave  them  tickets  so  that  at  the  end 
of  each  month  the  bills  would  be  sent  to  him  for  payment 
and  deducted  from  their  salaries.1  Captain  Bechel,  who 
travelled  about  Japan  for  seventeen  years,  investigated 
one  hundred  and  seven  districts  and  found  ninety-six  of 
them  pestilentially  immoral.  He  reports  that  phallic  wor- 
ship is  still  practised  in  many  Buddhist  shrines,  and  that  in 
some  districts  almost  all  the  adults  are  tainted  with  im- 
morality. He  speaks  of  a  principal  of  a  school  who  had 
several  paramours  with  the  knowledge  of  parents  and  chil- 
dren alike;  of  a  member  of  parliament  who  publicly  had 
two  concubines;  of  a  member  of  a  provisional  assembly 
who  had  two  wives  and  two  homes,  and  children  in  each, 
and  travelled  with  geisha;  and  of  leading  men,  including 
priests,  soncho  (chief  of  village),  doctor,  principal  of  the 
.school,  and  leading  business  men  who  sold  a  girl  of  twelve 
years  for  ten  yen  because  her  parents  could  not  support 
her,  and  she  might  become  a  charge  to  the  village.2 

The  reliability  of  Ernest  W.  Clement's  Handbook  of  Mod- 
em Japan  is  not  likely  to  be  questioned  by  any  prudent 
man.  The  author  has  lived  too  long  in  Japan  to  be  igno- 


1  Pamphlet,  Japanese  Young  Men  in  War  and  Peace,  published  by  the 
International  Committee  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  New  York. 

1  Article,  "Japan's  Need  and  Response,"  in  the  Missionary  Review  of  the 
World,  January,  1917,  pp.  5-6. 


378  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

rant  of  the  facts,  and  he  writes :  "As  is  well  known,  the  social 
evil  is  licensed,  and  therefore  legalized,  in  Japan;  it  is  not 
merely  not  condemned  but  actually  condoned.  In  Old  Ja- 
pan, the  young  girl  willing  to  sell  herself  to  a  life  of  shame  to 
relieve  the  poverty  and  distress  of  her  parents  would  be  con- 
sidered virtuous,  because  filial  piety  was  regarded  as  a  higher 
virtue  than  personal  chastity.  Nor  would  the  parents  who 
accepted  such  relief  be  severely  condemned,  because  the 
welfare  of  the  family  was  more  important  than  the  condi- 
tion of  the  individual.  And  even  in  modern  Japan,  in  the 
eyes  of  the  law,  it  is  no  crime  to  visit  a  licensed  house  of 
ill  fame;  and  visitors  to  such  places  hand  in  their  cards 
and  have  their  names  registered  just  as  if  they  were  attend- 
ing an  ordinary  public  function.  Nay,  more,  an  ex-president 
of  the  Imperial  University  and  one  of  the  leading  philos- 
ophers and  educators  of  the  day  has  come  out  in  public 
print  and  affirmed  that,  from  the  standpoint  of  science  and 
philosophy,  he  can  see  no  evil  in  prostitution  per  se."  l 

Ideas  of  modesty  in  all  countries  are  influenced  to  some 
extent  by  convention,  and  American  women  who  would 
sharply  resent  the  charge  of  indelicacy  will  sometimes  ap- 
pear at  social  functions  and  even  on  the  street  in  costumes 
which  the  Chinese  would  deem  highly  immoral.  The 
visitor  in  Japan  should,  therefore,  not  infer  too  much  from 
the  exposure  of  the  nude  which  is  often  observed  in  public 
places,  and  in  bathing  by  both  men  and  women.  But  mak- 
ing all  due  allowance  for  custom  in  such  matters,  the  gen- 
eral fact  is  indubitable  that  the  public  sentiment  of  Japan 
is  pervaded  by  the  idea  that  lust  is  a  natural  appetite  which 
may  be  almost  as  properly  gratified  as  one  would  gratify 
appetite  for  food  and  thirst  for  drink.  I  am  not  unmindful 
that  there  is  shameful  immorality  in  the  cities  of  Europe 
and  America,  and  that  most  of  the  foreign  settlements  in 
the  ports  of  Asia  include  sinks  of  iniquity  of  which  Sodom 
and  Gomorrah  might  have  been  ashamed.  Hundreds  of 
Asiatic  women  are  kept  by  dissolute  Americans  and  Euro- 
peans, and  the  arrival  of  a  steamer  load  of  tourists  usually 

1  A  Handbook  of  Modern  Japan,  pp.  166-167. 


THE  SOCIAL  AND  MORPHINE  EVILS  379 

means  a  harvest  for  the  brothels  of  the  port.  No  Asiatic 
can  be  viler  than  a  degenerate  white  man. 

Nor  is  Japan  alone  in  licensing  prostitutes.  Some  men 
in  Western  lands  deem  governmental  regulation  under  a 
license  system  a  better  way  of  dealing  with  the  social  evil 
than  to  permit  it  to  run  at  large  under  prohibitory  laws, 
which  are  usually  a  dead  letter,  except  as  police  use  them 
as  a  means  for  self-enrichment.  Japan  has  followed  the 
lead  of  some  European  nations  in  licensing  a  vice  which  no 
government  has  ever  eradicated.  But  whatever  may  be 
the  theory,  the  practical  effect  of  licensure  is  to  advertise 
vice,  make  it  easy  and  attractive,  and  clothe  it  with  official 
sanction.  Very  few  governments  are  in  such  open  alliance 
with  vice  as  the  Japanese  municipal  governments  appear  to 
be,  and  no  brothel  in  all  the  world  displays  Christian  sym- 
bols as  Japanese  brothels  display  Buddhist  symbols,  or  is 
indorsed  by  Christian  ministers  or  educators  as  Buddhists 
more  or  less  openly  indorse  them  in  Japan. 

I  am  aware  that  some  remedial  laws  have  now  been  en- 
acted, and  that  restrictive  decisions  have  been  handed 
down  by  the  courts.  The  "Free  Cassation  Regulation," 
issued  by  the  Home  Department  October  2,  1900,  gave 
licensed  women  the  right  to  leave  resorts  without  the  con- 
sent of  their  keepers,  and  thousands  of  girls  have  availed 
themselves  of  this  right,  so  that  an  inmate  of  a  brothel  is 
no  longer  a  legal  captive  for  the  period  of  her  contract. 
Girls  under  sixteen  years  of  age  may  not  be  lawfully  licensed 
at  all.  Test  cases  have  been  fought  through  the  courts 
which  form  gratifying  precedents  for  future  suits.  Rescue 
homes  have  been  opened,  and  the  number  of  licensed  pros- 
titutes has  been  greatly  reduced.  But  these  improvements 
were  obtained  chiefly  as  the  result  of  agitation  aroused  by 
missionaries  led  by  Mr.  Murphy  and  the  Salvation  Army 
against  a  vehemence  and  bitterness  of  opposition  which 
Mr.  Murphy  has  vividly  described.  When,  in  1916,  the 
authorities  of  Osaka  gave  a  permit  to  replace  a  burned  vice 
district  by  the  erection  of  brothels  on  a  tract  of  seventeen 
acres  near  Tennoji  Park,  the  Zoological  Garden,  and  Luna 


380  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

Park,  the  most  popular  recreation  grounds  in  the  city,  the 
Christians  organized  the  "Tobita  Licensed  Quarter  Opposi- 
tion Society,"  and  under  the  leadership  of  Mr.  George 
Gleason  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  and  Colonel  Yamamuro  of  the 
Salvation  Army,  began  a  campaign  which  enlisted  the  hearty 
co-operation  of  many  of  the  best  Japanese.  Letters  were 
sent  to  2,000  leading  citizens  asking  them  to  make  a  public 
declaration  of  their  attitude.  Six  hundred  sent  favorable 
replies,  and  only  3  wrote  in  opposition  to  the  movement. 
But  nearly  1,400  made  no  reply.  A  procession  of  Japanese 
women  headed  by  the  venerable  Christian,  Madame  Yajima, 
eighty-two  years  of  age,  went  through  the  streets  to  present 
a  petition  to  the  Governor  to  abandon  the  scheme.  He  was 
"too  busy"  to  see  them,  but  they  succeeded  in  getting  ac- 
cess to  the  chief  of  police.  The  Far  East,  a  Tokyo  publica- 
tion, reported  that  though  "the  matter  has  now  been  before 
the  public  for  months  past,"  it  is  "remarkable  that  those 
in  authority  have  not  seen  the  advisability  of  determining 
such  an  unsavory  business  by  a  concession  to  public  opinion, 
which  has  been  expressed  with  unusual  force."  A  Supreme 
Court  ruling  that  the  debts  of  inmates  to  their  brothel 
proprietors  are  binding  leaves  a  powerful  weapon  in  the 
hands  of  keepers,  who  are  as  notorious  in  Japan  as  else- 
where for  cheating  and  overcharging  their  girls  so  as  to 
keep  them  continually  in  debt. 

The  following  extract  from  a  report  that  was  published 
for  the  Standing  Committee  of  Co-operating  Christian 
Missions  in  Japan  shows  how  the  laws  are  evaded:  "Strict 
guard  is  kept  so  that  inmates  cannot  get  out  of  the  quarters 
easily  without  being  detected.  If  detected,  they  are  forced 
back,  the  section  of  the  Regulations  which  provides  for  the 
punishment  of  those  interfering  with  those  who  wish  to 
secure  their  freedom  being  practically  overlooked.  After 
their  arrival  at  the  police  station,  the  keepers  or  some  of 
their  hirelings  follow  and  threaten,  cajole,  and  plead  in 
turn,  in  the  endeavor  to  get  them  to  go  back.  After  the 
report  has  been  accepted  and  the  women  are  no  longer 
inmates,  the  keepers  often  take  from  them  their  clothes  and 


THE  SOCIAL  AND  MORPHINE  EVILS  381 

leave  only  thin,  dirty  dresses  and  obi.  Immediately  after 
one  gets  free,  the  keeper  almost  invariably  distrains  the 
property  of  those  who  have  put  their  stamps  to  the  con- 
tract. This  has  been  the  most  effectual  method  used  so  far. 
About  20  per  cent  return  to  a  life  of  shame,  and  almost 
without  exception  the  distraint  on  the  household  goods  of 
parents  and  relatives  furnishes  the  reason.  A  distraint  is 
likely  to  take  nearly  everything  so  that  the  hardships  en- 
dured by  those  who  are  so  unfortunate  as  to  have  their 
property  distrained  upon  are  great,  and  from  the  point  of 
view  of  those  who  are  so  low  down  in  the  moral  and  human 
scale  as  to  sell  their  children  for  vile  purposes  it  is  too  great 
a  hardship  to  be  endured  for  the  sake  of  one's  offspring." 

It  is  not  surprising  that  the  Japanese  have  carried  their 
customs  with  them  to  the  mainland  of  Asia.  In  China,  in- 
cluding Manchuria,  Japanese  prostitutes  abound  in  most  of 
the  larger  cities,  especially  the  ports;  and  they  are  also 
found  in  many  of  the  smaller  towns  in  the  northern  and 
eastern  parts  of  the  country,  and  in  the  Philippines,  For- 
mosa, and  the  Straits  Settlements.  The  late  John  B. 
Devins,  then  editor  of  the  New  York  Observer,  wrote: 
"When  passing  through  a  government  hospital  in  Manila, 
more  than  seventy  Japanese  women  in  one  ward  were 
pointed  out  as  women  of  the  street  with  the  remark :  '  Nearly 
every  Japanese  woman  in  the  Philippines  is  an  evil  woman.' " 
It  is  said  that  26,360  Japanese  women  are  living  as  prosti- 
tutes outside  of  their  own  land. 

A  particularly  embarrassing  situation  has  developed  at 
Tsing-tau,  the  Chinese  port  which  the  Japanese  took  from 
the  Germans  after  the  outbreak  of  the  European  War,  in 
1914.  One  of  their  early  acts  was  to  select  a  spacious  tract 
for  a  "red-light"  section,  and  to  erect  several  blocks  of 
buildings  upon  it.  The  site  chosen  was  close  to  the  Presby- 
terian Mission  compound,  with  its  residences  and  schools. 
Respectful  protests  from  the  missionaries  were  politely  re- 
ceived but  were  unavailing,  the  Japanese  officials  not  con- 
cealing their  surprise  that  such  objections  should  be  made. 
The  buildings  are  commodious  in  size,  attractive  in  appear- 


382  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

ance,  and  substantial  enough  to  indicate  intentions  of  per- 
manence. When  they  were  ready  for  occupancy,  they  were 
filled  with  girls,  and  there  was  a  formal  opening  with  elab- 
orate festivities.  Invitations  to  this  opening  were  sent  to 
all  the  officials,  prominent  men,  and  foreigners  hi  the  city, 
except  the  American  missionaries.  Every  night  the  sounds 
of  revelry  come  from  the  open-windowed  and  brightly 
lighted  houses  and  the  tastefully  laid  out  gardens  and  park- 
ways connected  with  them.  Sleep  is  often  impossible  in 
the  front  bedrooms  of  the  missionary  residences,  and  the 
orgy  seldom  dies  down  till  the  early  morning  hours. 

Like  conditions  prevail  in  Korea.  The  tendency  of  men 
of  all  races  to  be  more  unrestrained  abroad  than  at  home 
is  not  lacking  in  the  Japanese,  and  the  result  is  a  carnival 
of  vice  such  as  Korea  never  knew  before.  The  remedial 
ordinances  that  have  been  enacted  in  recent  years  in  Japan 
are  nominally  operative  in  Korea;  but  they  are  not  enforced 
hi  any  effective  way  except  in  sporadic  cases.  The  Koreans 
are  not  a  moral  people,  but  they  at  least  regarded  sensu- 
ality as  a  private  vice,  and  brothels  as  places  to  be  kept  in 
side  alleys.  But  the  Japanese  have  built  houses  of  prosti- 
tution in  Korea  as  they  have  built  court-houses  and  railway- 
stations.  When  they  locate  a  colony  they  usually  set  apart 
a  section  for  brothels.  Handsome  buildings  are  erected, 
provided  with  music  and  electric  lights,  and  made  as  attrac- 
tive as  any  places  in  the  city.  Nor  are  retired  locations 
selected.  In  November,  1910,  the  Seoul  authorities  ordered 
the  130  brothels  and  immoral  restaurants  that  were  scat- 
tered over  the  Japanese  quarter  to  remove  to  a  segregated 
section.  This  order  was  carried  out  by  police  raids,  and 
was  an  undoubted  benefit  to  the  business  and  residential 
districts  in  that  part  of  the  city.  Unfortunately,  the  desig- 
nated site  was  on  a  prominent  hillside  within  plain  view 
of  a  far  larger  proportion  of  the  capital  than  the  resorts 
had  been  before.  When  brilliantly  illuminated,  as  it  is 
every  evening,  it  is  the  most  conspicuous  object  in  the  city. 
Every  boy  and  girl  in  the  missionary  schools  on  the  opposite 
hill  cannot  help  knowing  that  it  is  there,  and  that  it  is 


THE  SOCIAL  AND  MORPHINE  EVILS  383 

thronged  nightly  by  men  who  consider  themselves  re- 
spectable. 

Conditions  substantially  similar,  although  of  course  on  a 
smaller  scale,  exist  in  practically  every  Japanese  colony  in 
Korea.  Even  where  the  number  of  Japanese  is  very  small, 
it  includes  prostitutes.  The  evil  is  not  confined  to  the 
"red-light"  districts.  Geisha  (dancing-girls)  are  scattered 
about  every  considerable  town,  and  waitresses  in  many  of 
the  inns,  restaurants  and  drinking-shops  are  well  under- 
stood to  be  prostitutes,  although  of  course  not  all  of  them 
are.  That  the  authorities  know  the  facts  is  apparent  from 
statistics  which  I  obtained  from  official  sources  during  my 
second  visit,  and  which  listed  immoral  women  in  Seoul  and 
Pyongyang  as  "prostitutes,"  "geisha,"  and  "waitresses  in 
inns,  saloons,  and  restaurants."  The  official  records  also 
showed  that  there  was  a  monthly  government  tax  collected 
from  prostitutes  and  geisha.  The  number  of  Korean  pros- 
titutes reported  by  the  authorities  in  Seoul  was  also  given 
me,  and  a  comparison  of  the  figures  showed  that  one  per- 
son in  thirty-one  of  the  Japanese  population  of  the  capital 
was  then  classified  as  immoral,  and  that  only  one  in  730 
of  the  Korean  population  was  so  classified.  It  is  only  fair 
to  say,  however,  that  the  very  publicity  which  the  Japa- 
nese give  to  the  traffic  makes  it  easier  to  tabulate  their 
statistics  than  those  of  the  Koreans,  who  are  more  secretive 
in  this  respect. 

Racial  distinctions  are  obliterated  by  this  social  evil. 
Koreans  are  not  only  openly  solicited  to  vice,  but  I  was  re- 
liably informed  that  it  is  not  uncommon  for  Japanese  pan- 
derers  to  conduct  small  travelling  parties  of  prostitutes 
from  village  to  village  in  the  country  districts.  The  crown- 
ing outrage  I  could  not  bring  myself  to  believe  if  the  editor 
of  the  Korea  Review  had  not  declared  that  "it  is  so  fully 
proved  both  by  foreign  and  native  witnesses  that  it  is  be- 
yond dispute.  In  a  certain  town  hi  Korea,  the  military 
quartered  soldiers  hi  some  Korean  houses,  and  in  others 
Japanese  prostitutes.  In  a  number  of  instances,  Korean 
Christians  were  compelled  to  give  up  part  of  their  houses 


384  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

to  these  prostitutes  who  carried  on  their  nefarious  business 
on  the  premises.  We  made  careful  inquiries  about  this 
unspeakable  outrage  on  decency,  and  the  fact  was  verified 
in  the  most  positive  manner." 

I  am  sorry  to  write  so  plainly  on  this  unpleasant  subject 
regarding  a  people  whom  I  respect  and  admire  in  many 
ways.  I  am  glad  to  know  that  increasing  numbers  of  Japa- 
nese lament  the  virtual  partnership  of  their  authorities  with 
the  social  evil,  and  would  gladly  see  it  dissolved  and  vice 
banished,  at  least  to  the  underworld  to  which  enlightened 
communities  relegate  it.  One  of  the  ways  in  which  the 
friendly  foreigner  can  help  these  high-minded  Japanese  to 
bring  about  better  conditions  is  to  make  it  clear  that  the 
public  opinion  of  civilized  mankind  condemns  vice,  and  that 
those  who  indulge  in  it  lose  both  their  own  character  and 
the  respect  of  the  world. 

Judgment  of  social  and  economic  conditions  in  Japan 
should  be  tempered  by  the  reflection  that  the  nation  has 
but  recently  emerged  from  an  era  of  ignorance  regarding 
these  subjects,  that  Western  nations  which  have  known 
these  things  much  longer  still  have  much  to  be  ashamed 
of,  and  that  increasing  numbers  of  Japanese  are  earnestly 
trying  to  bring  about  a  better  state  of  affairs.  Bishop 
Charles  H.  Brent  sadly  writes  of  his  observations  in  the 
Philippines:  "How  to  deal  wisely  and  effectively  with  this 
age-long  problem  has  been  the  puzzle  of  the  Christian  mis- 
sionary ever  since  Christian  missions  were  first  founded. 
We  ourselves  have  not  yet  found  the  way.  If  we  have 
erred,  as  I  think  we  have,  it  has  been  on  the  side  of  a  lack 
of  discipline.  If  we  have  seemed  to  be  losing  sight  of  the 
gravity  of  sexual  immorality,  it  is  because  we  have  come  to 
know  that  you  cannot  rate  the  offense  there  at  the  same 
estimate  as  in  the  Western  world.  I  have  often  thought 
with  contempt  and  scorn  of  the  veneer  that  glosses  over  the 
uncleanness  of  our  own  country,  and  wondered  what  would 
happen  to  the  self-righteous  Westerner  were  he  suddenly 
pressed  into  the  social  conditions  of  the  Igorots." l  While 

1  Article,  "Sixteen  Years  in  the  Philippines,"  in  the  Spirit  of  Missions, 
March,  1918. 


THE  SOCIAL  AND  MORPHINE  EVILS  385 

there  is  much  to  regret  in  the  social  and  industrial  condi- 
tions of  modern  Japan,  there  is  also  much  to  encourage  the 
hope  that  a  better  day  is  dawning.  The  forces  of  humanity 
and  moral  uplift  have  begun  to  operate,  and  they  are  yearly 
gaming  in  vigor  and  power. 

A  word  may  be  added  in  passing  regarding  the  policy  of 
segregating  social  vice,  since  the  Japanese  method  has  been 
recommended  by  many  European  and  some  American  stu- 
dents of  this  problem  who,  despairing  of  eradicating  the 
evil,  argue  that  it  is  better  to  restrict  it  to  a  limited  area 
where  it  can  be  isolated  and  watched,  where  only  deliber- 
ately immoral  men  will  seek  it,  and  where  women  can  be 
medically  examined,  than  it  is  to  have  it  scattered  through 
a  city  to  tempt  young  men  and  contaminate  the  neighbor- 
hoods of  respectable  families. 

The  fact  is,  however,  that  "segregation"  fails  to  segregate. 
A  typical  woman  of  the  class  under  consideration  likes  free- 
dom as  well  as  other  people  and  will  operate  at  large  as 
long  as  she  can.  When  the  police  interfere,  she  will  at- 
tempt to  bribe  them;  and  the  experience  of  a  thousand 
cities  proves  that  she  can  usually  succeed  in  doing  so. 
Only  the  most  hardened  and  reckless  cases,  or  the  most 
pitifully  ignorant  ones,  will  voluntarily  become  virtual 
prisoners  in  a  segregated  district.  Proof  of  this  appears 
in  the  great  number  of  immoral  women  outside  of  these  dis- 
tricts in  Japan  and  in  Western  cities  which  have  adopted 
the  policy  of  segregation,  no  small  part  of  their  vice  being 
"out  of  bounds." 

Segregation,  too,  places  the  stamp  of  legal  approval  upon 
licentiousness  as  a  recognized  business,  and  fosters  police 
corruption,  for  not  only  will  women  pay  the  police  to  keep 
out  but  brothel-keepers  will  pay  to  have  them  kept  in. 
The  American  Social  Hygiene  Association,  after  an  exhaus- 
tive investigation  of  the  subject  in  Europe  and  America, 
declares  that  segregation  increases  the  demand  for  prosti- 
tutes, enlarges  the  supply,  is  a  continuous  advertisement  of 
vice,  creates  an  illegally  privileged  class,  provides  a  meeting- 
place  for  the  idle  and  vicious,  increases  illegal  traffic  in 
liquor,  and  is  the  most  prolific  cause  of  public  contamination. 


386  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

The  policy  of  licensing  and  regulating  vice  is  an  equally 
flat  failure.  Immoral  women  are  as  averse  to  public  regis- 
tration and  its  accompanying  exactions  as  they  are  to 
segregation,  and  most  of  them  succeed  in  avoiding  it. 
Doctor  Abraham  Flexner,  of  New  York,  a  recognized  au- 
thority, says  that  "nowhere  is  more  than  an  unimportant 
fraction  registered.  .  .  .  Time  was  when  regulation  pre- 
vailed throughout  almost  the  whole  of  Europe.  It  has  now 
died  out  in  Great  Britain,  Holland,  Denmark,  Norway,  and 
Switzerland,  excepting  only  the  city  of  Geneva.  The  sys- 
tem is  on  its  last  legs  in  France,  Belgium,  Germany,  Austria- 
Hungary,  Sweden,  and  Italy.  In  only  two  towns,  Ham- 
burg and  Budapest,  do  the  municipal  authorities  as  a  whole 
any  longer  tenaciously  cling  to  it.  When  we  are  told  that 
regulation  is  practised  in  Europe,  we  may  confidently  reply 
that  the  system  has  died  out  in  many  countries,  and  is 
moribund  almost  everywhere  else."1 

As  for  the  much- vaunted  medical  inspection,  Doctor  Flex- 
ner declares  that  "it  is  a  farce,  and  that  there  is  not  the 
least  doubt  that  it  spreads  more  disease  than  it  discovers." 

The  whole  method  of  dealing  with  the  social  evil  by 
government  licensure  and  regulation  is  inherently  and 
thoroughly  unsound  in  theory  and  a  total  failure  in  practice. 
There  is  no  half-way  ground  in  this  matter.  The  only  right 
way  to  handle  it  is  to  regard  it  as  a  sin  and  crime,  to  be 
treated  as  burglary  and  murder  are  treated — something 
always  and  everywhere  and  in  all  circumstances  radically 
wrong,  and  to  be  fought  as  such  wherever  and  whenever  it 
is  found.  Compromise  of  any  kind  is  not  only  futile  as  a 
remedial  measure  but  it  actually  makes  a  bad  matter 
worse. 

And  how,  one  may  wonderingly  ask,  and  in  the  name  of 
all  justice,  fairness,  and  common  sense,  is  vice  to  be  effec- 
tively segregated  or  regulated  when  only  one  party  to  it, 
the  woman,  is  dealt  with,  and  the  other  party,  the  man, 
is  left  to  roam  at  will?  Society  is  in  far  greater  danger 
from  licentious  men,  the  majority  of  whom  are  also  diseased, 

1  Article  in  Social  Hygiene,  December,  1914. 


THE  SOCIAL  AND  MORPHINE  EVILS  387 

than  it  is  from  fallen  women,  who  are  usually  the  victims 
of  men.  Let  those  who  imagine  that  the  social  evil  can  be 
extirpated,  or  reduced  to  a  minimum,  by  forcing  a  com- 
parative handful  of  pitifully  forlorn  girls  to  live  in  a  segre- 
gated quarter,  or  to  go  to  a  police  station  and  publicly 
register  and  take  out  licenses — let  them,  I  say,  demand 
that  the  far  greater  number  of  men  who  exploit  or  patronize 
them  be  compelled  to  submit  to  the  same  treatment  or  go 
to  jail.  We  shall  never  get  anywhere  in  dealing  with  the 
social  evil  until  we  realize  that  it  is  not  so  much  a  woman 
problem  as  it  is  a  man  problem. 

The  morphine  evil  presents  another  serious  question. 
The  world  followed  with  admiration  the  splendid  effort 
which  the  Chinese  made  in  recent  years  to  extirpate  the 
opium  vice — the  curse  of  China.  Under  the  agreement 
with  the  British  Government  in  1907,  the  exportation  of 
East  Indian  opium  to  China  was  to  be  reduced  at  the  rate 
of  5,100  chests  a  year,  provided  the  Chinese  made  propor- 
tionate reduction  in  the  production  of  native  opium,  the 
traffic  to  cease  altogether  in  ten  years.  The  Anglo-Chinese 
treaty  of  1911  supplemented  this  by  forbidding  the  ship- 
ment of  opium  into  any  province  which  could  show  that  it 
was  not  raising  any  domestic  opium.  The  ten-year  period 
for  the  country  as  a  whole  expired  March  31,  1917,  after 
which  the  legal  prohibition  became  absolute.  The  law, 
like  laws  against  vicious  habits  in  other  countries,  was  en- 
forced with  varying  degrees  of  strictness.  For  a  time 
opium-smoking  appeared  to  be  eliminated.  Violations  were 
probably  no  more  common  than  violations  of  prohibitory 
liquor  laws  in  the  "dry"  States  of  America,  and  for  a  time 
were  quite  as  sternly  punished,  except  in  the  foreign  con- 
cessions in  the  treaty  ports,  where  the  Chinese  magistrates 
had  no  jurisdiction.  Tang  Shao  Yi  said  in  1914  that  Chinese 
officials  had  closed  all  the  opium- joints  in  the  Chinese  city, 
but  that  in  the  foreign  settlements  joints  were  wide  open 
and  selling  $600,000  worth  of  opium  a  week. 

Then  the  evil  began  to  reassert  itself.    The  poppy  was 


388  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

again  cultivated,  at  first  in  secluded  places  in  the  mountain 
districts,  and  then  more  openly  in  some  of  the  interior  prov- 
inces like  Shensi  and  Kwei-chou;  the  military  governor  of 
the  former  province  openly  declaring  that  opium-growing 
was  necessary  for  revenue.  The  government  had  agreed 
to  take  over  the  1,700  chests  of  East  Indian  opium  held  by 
the  Opium  Combine  in  Shanghai  and  Hongkong,  paying 
$15,000,000  in  government  ten-year  bonds.  The  govern- 
ment was  then  to  sell  the  opium  at  an  advanced  price  to  a 
syndicate,  which  was  to  dispose  of  it  for  medicinal  purposes 
at  a  still  higher  rate — considerably  higher.  Officials  were 
well  represented  in  the  syndicate,  and  a  rather  loose  inter- 
pretation was  placed  upon  the  word  "medicinal."  The  dis- 
organized condition  of  the  country  encouraged  laxity  and 
diminished  the  danger  of  prosecution.  However,  men  of 
character  and  intelligence,  both  Chinese  and  foreign,  were 
alert  to  the  peril,  and  made  resolute  efforts  to  avert  it.  If 
the  evil  could  have  been  narrowed  down  to  the  smoking  of 
opium,  it  probably  could  have  been  abated,  in  large  part, 
at  least,  for  the  law  had  the  backing  of  a  strong  public 
sentiment,  and  of  the  whole  Christian  element  in  the  Chinese 
churches  and  the  missionary  body.  Great  satisfaction  was 
expressed  when,  in  November,  1918,  the  Chinese  legation 
in  Washington  announced  that  President  Hsu  Shih-chang 
had  ordered  the  burning  of  the  opium  which  the  Chinese 
Government  had  purchased  from  the  foreign  merchants  in 
Shanghai. 

Unhappily,  when  evil  appetite  is  repressed  at  one  point 
it  is  apt  to  break  out  at  another,  and  as  the  use  of  opium  de- 
creased, the  use  of  its  alkaloid,  morphine,  increased.  The 
Chinese  Government  discerned  the  danger,  and  in  1903 
imposed  a  tax  that  was  intended  to  be  prohibitive,  and  was 
so  as  far  as  legitimate  trade  was  concerned.  Nevertheless, 
morphine  was  sold  in  constantly  enlarging  quantities.  The 
Chinese  authorities  are  not  ignorant  of  this  evasion  of  the 
law,  but  their  difficulties  are  great.  If  smugglers  only  had 
to  be  dealt  with,  the  injury  would  be  comparatively  small, 
for  the  drug  would  not  be  common  enough  to  be  accessible 


THE  SOCIAL  AND  MORPHINE  EVILS  389 

except  to  the  most  confirmed  and  determined  morphine 
fiends.  Chinese  dealers,  too,  can  be  and  are  severely  pun- 
ished. The  mischief  is  done  by  foreigners,  chiefly  Japanese. 
In  the  year  1914  Japan  imported  morphine  at  the  rate  of 
over  a  ton  a  month,  buying  most  of  it  from  one  firm  in 
London,  and  two  firms  in  Edinburgh,  and  the  drug  con- 
tinues to  pour  in  at  a  startling  rate.  What  are  the  Japa- 
nese doing  with  all  this  morphine?  They  use  very  little 
of  it  themselves,  only  a  comparatively  small  quantity  for 
medicinal  purposes,  other  uses  of  the  drug  being  prohibited 
by  Japanese  law.  Let  any  one  go  into  the  villages  of  northern 
China  and  Manchuria  and  he  will  quickly  learn  what  the 
Japanese  are  doing  with  such  vast  quantities  of  morphine. 
He  will  find  hundreds  of  Japanese  peddlers  selling  it  to  the 
natives  under  various  labels:  "white  powder,"  "soothing 
stuff,"  "dreamland  elixir,"  and  in  some  instances  the  real 
name — morphine.  Most  of  it  comes  in  through  the  post. 
Several  foreign  governments,  including  Japan,  maintain 
their  own  post-offices  in  China.  The  Chinese  authorities 
have  no  control  over  them  or  their  mail  and  merchandise 
unless  a  letter  or  package  is  remailed  at  a  native  office.  A 
Japanese  trader  can  therefore  send  morphine  through  any 
of  the  numerous  Japanese  post-offices.  The  Chinese  Gov- 
ernment is  not  permitted  to  examine  the  packages,  and  the 
local  Japanese  obtain  them  direct.  The  Chinese  magis- 
trates are  helpless,  as  they  dare  not  interfere  with  the 
Japanese. 

The  London  Lancet  and  The  Medical  Record  have  given 
currency  to  a  paper  read  before  a  conference  of  the  National 
Medical  Association  of  China  in  January,  1917,  by  G.  L. 
Tuck,  M.D.,  whose  Chinese  name  is  Wu  Lien-teh,  in  which 
he  says:  "Almost  every  Japanese  drug  dealer  or  peddler 
hi  Manchuria  sells  it  in  one  form  or  another,  and  does  so 
with  impunity,  because  no  Japanese  can  be  arrested  with- 
out complaint  being  first  lodged  at  the  consulate.  From 
these  Japanese  agents  and  subagents,  the  drug  may  be 
passed  on  to  disreputable  Chinese  who  frequent  the  coolie 
depots,  and  inject  a  solution,  usually  very  dirty,  with  a 


390  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

hypodermic  syringe  which  may  be  made  of  glass,  metal, 
or  even  bamboo.  Rigorous  imprisonment  for  two  years  is 
a  common  sentence  for  Chinese  found  with  morphine  in 
their  possession,  but  the  principal  culprits  often  escape 
punishment."  Doctor  Wu  Lien-teh  further  stated  that 
during  his  five  years'  residence  in  Manchuria  he  saw  ter- 
rible havoc  wrought  upon  the  population  by  this  drug;  that 
thousands  of  poor  people  die  in  the  large  cities  during  the 
winter  months,  partly  from  cold  but  principally  from  in- 
ability to  work  on  account  of  their  morphine  habits;  that 
the  evil  appears  to  be  spreading;  and  that  enormous  profits 
are  made  by  the  dealers  in  this  illicit  trade,  the  profits  made 
on  six  and  a  quarter  tons  by  the  dealers  in  China  in  1913 
amounting  to  about  $4,200,000. 

The  situation  is  serious  also  in  Korea.  Most  of  the  Ko- 
reans are  not  sensitive  about  it,  but  the  more  enlightened 
are,  and  every  real  friend  of  the  people  is  distressed  by  it. 
The  traffic  is  contrary  to  Japanese  law,  but  it  is  conducted 
more  or  less  openly  by  Japanese,  particularly  in  the  coun- 
try districts,  where  peddlers  spread  the  morphine  and  opium 
habit  among  multitudes  of  Koreans.  The  Japanese  strictly 
enforce  their  law  in  Japan,  and  magistrates  in  Korea  will 
usually  punish  a  trafficker  if  the  case  is  brought  so  directly 
to  their  notice  that  they  cannot  escape  responsibility;  but 
they  will  seldom  press  matters  unless  compelled  to  do  so, 
and  the  effort  to  make  them  is  apt  to  be  unpleasant.  Thou- 
sands of  Koreans  are  learning  the  use  of  the  morphine 
syringe  from  these  Japanese  itinerant  venders,  and  as  they 
are  like  children  in  the  indulgence  of  their  appetites,  as  un- 
sophisticated as  Africans  and  American  Indians  are  with 
liquor,  the  evil  has  grown  to  serious  proportions.  Every 
hospital  in  Korea  now  has  to  treat  opium  and  morphine 
fiends.  Opium-smoking  was  brought  to  Korea  by  the  Chi- 
nese long  ago,  but  the  evil  has  never  been  so  great  as  it  is 
now.  Protests  of  missionaries  are  beginning  to  make  some 
impression,  but  the  demoralization  of  Koreans  continues. 

It  would  be  a  great  boon  to  the  numerous  but  politically 
weak  peoples  of  the  mainland  if  the  governments  of  Great 


THE  SOCIAL  AND  MORPHINE  EVILS  391 

Britain  and  Japan  would  adopt  joint  measures  to  put  an 
end  to  this  demoralizing  traffic.  Official  reports  show  that 
firms  in  Great  Britain  exported  seven  and  a  half  tons  of 
morphine  in  1912,  eleven  and  a  half  tons  in  1913,  fourteen 
tons  in  1914,  and  that  by  1916  the  annual  export  had  reached 
sixteen  tons.  Germany  exported  one  and  three-eighths 
tons  in  1913,  but  this  small  supply  was  cut  off  by  the  out- 
break of  the  war  in  the  following  year.  Responsibility  un- 
der present  conditions  lies  heavily  upon  Japan  and  Great 
Britain.  Exports  from  Great  Britain  have  fallen  off  con- 
siderably in  recent  years,  but  the  Edinburgh  Anti-Opium 
Committee,  of  which  Lord  Polwarth  is  president,  reported 
in  April,  1917,  that  "allowing  half  a  grain  per  injection, 
enough  has  been  provided  to  drug  daily  500,000  persons," 
and  that  "it  is  safe  to  say  that  the  amount  supplied  from 
Britain  annually  is  sufficient  to  demoralize  a  million  of 
Chinese."  Steady  pressure  from  the  Anti-Opium  Com- 
mittee finally  resulted  in  the  following  announcement  in 
the  House  of  Commons,  October  23,  1917,  in  answer  to  a 
question  by  Sir  William  J.  Collins,  M.  P.:  "Licenses  to  ex- 
port morphia  or  cocaine  from  this  country  to  Japan  are  not 
granted  unless  they  are  accompanied  by  certificates  ob- 
tained from  the  Japanese  Home  Office  or  from  the  Japanese 
authorities  of  the  Kwantung  Leased  Territory,  to  the  effect 
that  the  morphia  or  cocaine  is  for  actual  consumption  in 
Japan  or  in  Dairen  and  its  vicinity,  and  is  for  medical  pur- 
poses only.  A  notice  to  this  effect  was  published  in  the 
Board  of  Trade  Journal  on  llth  October,  after  communica- 
tion with  the  Japanese  Government." 

It  was  also  stated  that  the  Japanese  Government  had 
undertaken  to  prevent  the  smuggling  of  the  drugs.  It  was 
not  easy  for  the  British  Government  to  press  the  matter 
against  an  ally  in  a  great  war.  But  the  war  is  now  over. 
Moreover,  something  could  be  done  at  home.  Manufac- 
ture as  well  as  sale  should  be  regulated.  As  long  as  three 
British  firms  are  allowed  to  produce  so  much  more  of  the 
drug  than  is  required  for  legitimate  medicinal  purposes, 
the  evil  is  likely  to  continue.  Morphine,  being  a  white, 


392  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

light,  odorless,  and  highly  concentrated  powder,  can  be 
smuggled  out  of  a  country  with  comparative  ease.  At  any 
rate,  it  is  fair  to  ask  what  becomes  of  the  surplus  British 
product.  Presumably  the  manufacturers  do  not  make 
more  than  they  can  sell,  and  it  is  quite  safe  to  say  that  the 
surplus  finds  its  way  via  Japan  to  Korea  and  China. 


CHAPTER  XXV 
JAPAN  AND  AMERICA 

RELATIONS  between  Japan  and  the  United  States  began 
most  auspiciously.  I  need  not  repeat  the  familiar  story  of 
the  famous  expedition  which  President  Millard  Fillmore 
sent  to  Japan  in  1852  and  1853  under  that  sailor-diplomat, 
Commodore  Matthew  C.  Perry.  While  it  consisted  of  naval 
vessels  whose  saluting  guns  at  first  aroused  the  wildest  ex- 
citement and  alarm  among  the  then  untutored  Japanese,  the 
object  of  the  expedition  was  distinctively  peaceful  in  pur- 
pose, and  it  issued  in  peaceful  conclusions.  Americans  are 
justly  proud  that  Japan's  first  treaty  with  a  Western  nation 
was  the  treaty  of  March  31,  1854,  with  the  United  States. 

Happy  was  it  also  for  relations  of  good-will  that  the  first 
American  Minister  to  Japan  was  Townsend  Harris — mer- 
chant, educator,  and  philanthropist  as  well  as  diplomat, 
who  was  appointed  Consul-General  in  1855,  and  commis- 
sioned as  Minister  upon  the  ratification  of  the  treaty  of 
1858,  and  who  brought  to  his  difficult  and  delicate  task  a 
real  genius  for  dealing  with  Asiatic  peoples.  His  courage 
in  remaining  at  his  post  in  a  time  of  danger  when  other 
foreigners  fled,  his  genuine  faith  in  the  Japanese,  and  his 
tactful  determination  to  win  their  confidence  gave  him  a 
prestige  in  Japan  which  still  abides.  It  enabled  him,  in 
1858,  to  secure  a  commercial  treaty,  and  January  1,  1859, 
the  opening  of  three  treaty  ports  in  which  foreigners  could 
reside.  The  Honorable  John  W.  Foster  said,  in  his  history 
of  American  Diplomacy  in  the  Orient,  that  while  the  genius 
of  Perry  had  unbarred  the  gate  of  the  Island  Empire  and 
left  it  ajar,  it  was  the  skill  of  Harris  which  threw  it  open  to 
the  commercial  enterprise  of  the  world;  that  he  reflected 
great  honor  upon  his  country  and  justly  deserves  to  rank 
among  the  first  diplomats  of  the  world,  if  such  rank  is 
measured  by  accomplishment. 

393 


394  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

This  good  beginning  was  followed  by  what  William  H. 
Seward  called  "the  tutorship  of  the  United  States  in  Japan," 
"based  on  deeper  and  broader  principles  of  philanthropy 
than  have  hitherto  been  practised  in  the  intercourse  of 
nations."  Noble  was  the  group  of  men  and  women  from 
America  who  laid  broad  and  deep  the  foundations  of  progress 
and  friendship — Hepburn,  Brown,  Verbeck,  Murray,  and 
others  of  like  character  and  devotion,  whose  special  work 
will  be  discussed  hi  a  later  chapter. 

All  went  smoothly  in  the  relations  of  the  two  countries 
until  comparatively  recent  years,  when  the  Japanese  began 
to  emigrate.  In  this  era  of  easy  international  travel  most 
nations  have  overflowed  their  boundaries  and  subjects  of 
the  more  alert  and  ambitious  ones  have  gone  to  many  differ- 
ent lands.  The  Japanese  lived  a  secluded  life  until  a  few 
decades  ago;  but  when  their  isolation  ceased,  enterprising 
Japanese  began  to  roam  afar.  The  pressure  of  expanding 
population  hi  a  limited  territory  added  strong  incentive. 
A  generation  ago  there  were  not  more  than  20,000  Japa- 
nese outside  of  Japan,  and  most  of  them  were  in  Korea. 
In  1918  the  Department  of  Foreign  Affairs  in  Tokyo  re- 
ported that  the  number  of  Japanese  in  other  lands  was 
640,421,  distributed  as  follows:  Manchuria,  310,158;  China 
proper,  33,668;  Southern  Asia  and  Oceanica,  29,627; 
Europe,  1,464;  Russia  in  Asia,  9,717;  Canada,  13,823; 
Hawaiian  Islands,  101,645;  United  States,  112,293;  Mexico, 
1,169;  South  America,  26,857.  Nearly  half  the  pop- 
ulation of  the  Hawaiian  Islands  is  Japanese — 101,645  out 
of  219,940. 

These  emigrants  met  with  varying  degrees  of  welcome 
in  the  countries  in  which  they  settled.  Industrious  and 
self-reliant,  they  had  no  difficulty  in  gaining  a  foothold; 
but  while  their  strong  qualities  were  everywhere  recognized, 
they  were  seldom  popular.  For  that  matter,  are  European 
and  American  colonies  in  Asia  popular?  Differences  in 
race,  language,  religion,  and  social  customs  are  not  con- 
ducive to  sympathetic  personal  relations  anywhere. 

In  the  United  States  the  strain  became  acute.    Some 


JAPAN  AND  AMERICA  395 

Americans  who  had  regarded  a  Japanese  in  Japan  as  a 
picturesquely  attractive  figure  changed  their  minds  when 
he  settled  next  door  with  his  different  scale  of  living  and 
standards  of  conduct.  Japanese  students,  merchants,  and 
professional  men  have  aroused  no  particular  antagonism  in 
America,  and  they  freely  reside  where  they  please.  In 
some  cities,  notably  New  York,  Japanese  of  these  types  are 
held  in  high  esteem.  But  95  per  cent  of  the  Japanese  in 
California  are  peasant  farmers,  fruit-raisers,  truck-garden- 
ers, and  laborers,  only  5  per  cent  being  classed  as  officials, 
students,  and  professional  men.1  Willing  to  work  longer 
hours  than  white  men,  and  to  accept  lower  wages,  their 
successful  competition  speedily  excites  the  wrath  and  race 
prejudice  of  their  American  neighbors.  Social  ostracism 
intensifies  the  natural  disposition  of  men  to  associate  with 
their  own  kind,  and  so  the  Japanese  perforce  segregate 
themselves  in  groups  which  are  distinct  from  the  rest  of  the 
population.  These  groups  are  of  varying  sizes.  Of  the 
60,000  Japanese  now  in  California,  20,000  are  in  Los  Angeles 
and  its  vicinity,  8,000  in  and  around  San  Francisco,  3,000 
in  Oakland  and  Alameda  County,  and  the  remaining  29,000 
are  in  the  Sacramento  and  San  Joaquin  valleys,  in  and  around 
Stockton,  in  Fresno  County,  and  other  places  adjacent  to 
agricultural  regions.2 

The  story  of  the  agitation  on  the  Pacific  coast  is  not 
pleasant  reading.  Angry  recriminations,  mob  violence, 
inimical  legislation,  and  indignant  protests  have  marked  the 
course  of  events.  A  detailed  account  would  lie  beyond  the 
scope  of  this  volume.  Abundant  material  is  available  for 
the  reader  in  numerous  books  and  magazine  articles.3 
Suffice  it  here  to  indicate  certain  facts  and  conclusions  that 
impress  me  as  essential  to  an  understanding  of  the  problem : 

1  Special  State  Investigation,  cited  by  Gulick  and  Scherer. 

1  Acting  Consul-General  Yamazaki,  San  Francisco,  1916. 

3  The  following  are  worthy  of  special  mention:  The  Japanese  Crisis,  by 
James  A.  B.  Scherer;  The  Japanese  Problem  in  the  United  States,  by  H.  A. 
Willie;  Japanese  Expansion  and  American  Policies,  by  J.  F.  Abbott;  Asia  at 
the  Door,  by  K.  K.  Kawakami;  and  The  American- Japanese  Problem  and 
America  and  the  Orient,  both  by  Sidney  L.  Gulick, 


396:  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

First.  Unrestricted  immigration  and  landownership  by 
Asiatics  who  enter  into  industrial  competition  with  Ameri- 
cans, who  represent  lower  standards  of  living,  and  who 
cannot  or  will  not  assimilate  with  them,  is  clearly  imprac- 
ticable. It  is  not  a  question  of  equality  or  brotherhood, 
but  of  economic  and  social  adjustments  which  are  insoluble 
under  present  conditions. 

Second.  The  Japanese  Government  does  not  ask  for 
such  unrestricted  immigration  and  landownership.  It  would 
rather  have  its  surplus  laboring  population  go  to  Korea, 
Formosa,  and  China,  where  every  additional  Japanese 
helps  to  strengthen  Japanese  interests.  The  emigrants  to 
America  are  not  only  lost  to  the  nation,  except  for  the  money 
that  they  send  back  to  their  relatives,  but  the  majority  of 
them  are  of  a  grade  which  high-class  Japanese  do  not  care 
to  have  considered  as  representative  of  their  people.  The 
business  and  professional  men  in  such  cities  as  New  York 
and  Washington  are  a  fine  type  of  intelligent  and  cultured 
Japanese;  but  of  the  mass  of  laborers  Marquis  Okuma 
frankly  said:  "We  are  not  proud  of  the  Japanese  emigrants 
who  go  to  America.  They  are  coolies.  They  do  not  un- 
derstand what  trouble  they  have  been  giving  to  the  Japa- 
nese nation  by  their  presence  in  America.  Somebody  in 
Japan  set  the  bad  example  of  conducting  an  emigration 
business.  .  .  .  The  emigration  question,  at  all  events, 
should  be  treated  merely  as  an  emigration  question,  and 
not  as  one  either  political  or  diplomatic."1 

The  Osaka  Mainichi  is  equally  outspoken.  Commenting 
on  the  treaty  of  February  11,  1911,  the  editor  wrote:  "It 
is  desirable  to  eliminate  emigration  not  only  from  the 
treaty  but  to  prevent  emigration  to  America.  Emigration 
is  not  a  thing  to  be  looked  upon  with  favor.  It  means 
nothing  but  the  exportation  of  coolies.  It  parades  the 
lowest  mass  of  the  Japanese  people  in  foreign  countries, 
and  furnishes  the  ground  for  various  international  em- 
broglios.  .  .  .  Because  emigration  has  been  conducted  as 
a  business,  horrible  crimes  have  been  disclosed  here  and 

1  Quoted  in  The  Oriental  Review,  April  10,  1911. 


JAPAN  AND  AMERICA  397 

there,  impairing  Japan's  fair  name.    The  exportation  of 
coolies  is  a  disgrace  to  the  nation." 

Third.  What,  then,  does  the  Japanese  Government  want  ? 
Just  this  and  nothing  more:  that  American  laws  shall  not 
discriminate  against  Japanese  as  compared  with  immigrants 
of  other  nationalities.  No  self-respecting  government  can 
acquiesce  in  having  its  subjects  singled  out  for  exclusion 
from  privileges  that  are  freely  granted  to  subjects  of  other 
governments.  "The  real  question  at  issue  therefore  is  be- 
tween a  discriminatory  and  a  non-discriminatory  alien  land 
law."  Japan  is  perfectly  willing  to  have  her  people  in  the 
United  States  treated  in  the  same  way  as  other  aliens  are 
treated.  It  is  the  differential  treatment  that  is  objectiona- 
ble. Marquis  Okuma  said  this  in  so  many  words  in  reply 
to  a  question  by  a  representative  of  the  New  York  Times  : 
"If  you  ask  me  what  we  want,  then  I  must  say  frankly 
that  we  want  equal  treatment  with  the  European  nations. 
We  want  you  to  cease  to  exercise  racial  discrimination."1 
"Racial  discrimination"  is  precisely  what  America  is  exer- 
cising now.  Laws  bear  against  the  Japanese  and  Chinese 
which  do  not  bear  against  peoples  of  many  other  nation- 
alities. Courts  naturalize  as  American  citizens  all  comers 
from  Europe  and  South  America,  and  also  Turks,  Hindus, 
Persians,  Mexicans  and  Hottentots — but  not  Japanese  or 
Chinese.  Can  we  wonder  that  these  high-spirited  people 
are  deeply  wounded  when  we  exclude  them  from  those 
privileges  that  we  readily  grant  to  immigrants  of  inferior 
type?  Only  a  very  few  of  the  Japanese  would  apply  for 
naturalization  if  the  laws  permitted  them  to  do  so;  for 
most  of  them  do  not  want  to  change  their  allegiance.  But 
their  inclusion  in  the  permissive  law  which  opens  the  door 
to  other  races  would  alter  what  Doctor  Sidney  L.  Gulick 
has  well  called  "the  entire  psychological  attitude"  of  the 
Japanese  toward  us.  Immigration  could  be  and  should  be 
handled  as  a  separate  problem.  The  Japanese,  as  already 
intimated,  ask  nothing  more  here  than  America  freely  ac- 
cords to  Tartars  and  Zulus. 

1  Interview  in  the  New  York  Times,  June  18,  1916. 


398  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

Fourth.  Popular  feeling  lays  all  the  blame  upon  labor- 
unions;  but  Doctor  James  A.  B.  Scherer,  after  seven  years' 
study  of  this  question  in  California,  said,  what  will  be  news 
to  most  people  in  the  eastern  section  of  the  United  States, 
that  the  labor-unions  in  California  as  well  as  the  Japanese 
Government  would  be  entirely  satisfied  with  a  law  excluding 
all  aliens  from  landownership,  but  that  the  effort  to  pass 
such  a  law  has  been  blocked  by  banks,  trust  companies, 
chambers  of  commerce,  and  other  large  business  interests 
which  fear  that  it  would  prevent  the  investment  of  foreign 
capital  in  the  State.  He  deplores  the  fact  that  a  grave 
international  issue  is  thus  subordinated  to  commercial  in- 
terests which  in  his  opinion  would  not  be  so  seriously  in- 
jured as  they  imagine.1 

Fifth.  There  is  now  no  danger  whatever  of  a  deluge  of 
Japanese  immigration.  By  the  "Gentlemen's  Agreement" 
of  November,  1907,  Japan  consented  to  refuse  passports 
to  coolies  who  desire  to  go  to  the  United  States.  The  Japa- 
nese Ambassador  in  Washington  made  the  following  decla- 
ration in  signing  the  treaty  of  February  21,  1911:  "In 
proceeding  this  day  to  the  signature  of  the  treaty  of  com- 
merce and  navigation,  .  .  .  the  undersigned  has  the  honor 
to  declare  that  the  Imperial  Japanese  Government  are  fully 
prepared  to  maintain  with  equal  effectiveness  the  limitation 
and  control  which  they  have  for  the  past  three  years  exer- 
cised in  regulation  of  the  laborers  to  the  United  States." 
Japan  has  scrupulously  kept  this  agreement.  There  has 
been  no  emigration  of  laboring  men  to  the  United  States 
for  years,  and  the  total  Japanese  population  in  this  coun- 
try is  steadily  decreasing.  In  a  recent  period  of  seven 
years  15,139  more  Japanese  men  left  America  than  ar- 
rived. When  some  overzealous  members  of  Congress  tried 
to  have  a  clause  inserted  in  the  Burnett  Bill,  in  1916,  which 
would  give  legal  recognition  to  the  "Gentlemen's  Agree- 
ment," Japan  vigorously  protested.  It  would  keep  its 
coolies  out  of  its  own  volition,  but  it  would  not  submit  to 
an  order  to  do  so.  The  Premier 'of  Japan,  then  Marquis 

1  The  Japanese  Crisis,  pp.  97-102,  and  110. 


JAPAN  AND  AMERICA  399 

Okuma,  characterized  "the  indirect  reference  to  Japan  in 
the  Burnett  Bill  as  insulting,"  and  declared:  "It  is  time 
for  the  people  of  the  United  States  to  wake  up  to  a  sense  of 
justice  and  throw  over  racial  prejudice."1  The  objection- 
able clause  in  the  bill  was  finally  dropped,  but  the  discus- 
sion left  an  unpleasant  memory. 

Sixth.  When  a  State  fails  to  give  proper  protection  to 
aliens  residing  within  its  borders  or  passes  a  law  which 
contravenes  rights  that  are  guaranteed  to  them  by  treaty, 
it  will  not  do  for  the  federal  government  to  answer  just 
protests  by  pleading  that  it  cannot  coerce  a  sovereign  State 
in  such  matters.  Either  the  United  States  form  a  nation 
or  they  do  not.  If  they  do,  the  national  government  may 
be  justly  held  responsible  when  its  citizens  violate  treaties 
which  it  has  made  with  other  nations.  If  we  are  not  a 
nation,  then  the  offended  government  has  the  right  to  deal 
directly  with  the  particular  State  which  committed  or  con- 
doned the  offense.  America  itself  has  acted  on  this  prin- 
ciple with  Japan.  In  1863,  the  Daimyo  of  Choshu  fired 
on  some  American,  French,  and  Dutch  merchant  vessels 
which  were  passing  the  Strait  of  Shimonoseki.  When  their 
governments  demanded  his  punishment,  the  Japanese  Gov- 
ernment replied  that  it  had  no  control  over  the  local  au- 
thorities in  such  matters.  The  foreign  governments  then 
declared  that  if  the  government  of  Japan  could  not  deal 
with  the  Daimyo,  they  could  and  would.  The  result  was 
that  a  squadron  of  American,  French,  Dutch,  and  British 
warships  bombarded  the  Daimyo's  forts,  completely  de- 
molished them,  and  compelled  the  payment  of  an  indemnity 
of  $3,000,000.  The  United  States  ultimately  returned  its 
share;  but  the  humiliating  fact  of  punishment  remained. 
Japanese  memory  is  not  short,  and  when  Japan  is  told  by 
the  government  of  the  United  States  that  it  cannot  inter- 
fere with  the  State  of  California,  the  Japanese  feel  that  they 
have  a  historical  precedent,  to  which  we  ourselves  have 
been  a  party,  for  saying  that  if  the  federal  government 
cannot  control  its  constituent  parts,  the  Japanese  Govern- 

1  The  New  York  Times,  June  18,  1916. 


400  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

ment  may  proceed  to  do  so.  If  our  laws  do  not  permit  our 
federal  government  to  prevent  one  or  more  of  its  consti- 
tuent States  from  embroiling  the  whole  country  with  other 
countries,  a  law  authorizing  it  to  do  so  should  be  enacted 
without  further  delay.  The  American  Bar  Association  has 
endorsed  a  bill  to  empower  the  federal  government  to  deal 
directly  in  all  criminal  cases  in  which  aliens  are  involved. 
It  ought  to  be  passed. 

Seventh.  This  controversy  has  brought  severer  strain 
upon  our  relations  with  Japan  than  the  American  people 
realize.  The  Japanese  do  not  conceal  their  irritation  and 
resentment.  "Any  attempt  to  force  the  issue  at  the  present 
time  may  lead  to  very  undesirable  results,"  significantly 
remarked  "one  of  America's  best  friends  in  Japan,  Marquis 
Okuma,  in  the  interview  already  referred  to.  In  1914 
Naoichi  Masaoka  published,  under  the  title  Japan  to 
America  a  symposium  by  thirty-five  political  leaders  and 
representative  citizens  of  Japan  on  the  relations  between 
Japan  and  the  United  States.  The  volume  abounds  in 
warmly  appreciative  references  to  the  historical  friendship 
of  the  Japanese  toward  America,  and  the  sincere  desire  of 
the  writers  that  it  should  continue  unbroken;  but  through- 
out there  is  a  distinct  intimation  that  Japan  is  rankling 
under  a  sense  of  deep  injustice,  and  that,  if  relief  is  not  af- 
forded, it  will  not  be  the  fault  of  Japan  if  trouble  shall 
ensue.  A  characteristic  utterance  is  that  of  Professor 
Shigeo  Suyehiro,  professor  in  the  law  school  of  the  Kyoto 
Imperial  University:  "In  recent  years,  America  has  been 
treating  us  in  a  way  rather  unpleasant  to  us.  In  more  than 
one  instance  it  was  only  with  a  lingering  sense  of  gratitude 
for  her  past  friendship  that  we  endured  what  we  could  not 
otherwise  have  endured.  ...  If  she  rejects  it  [our  claim 
for  justice]  I  am  afraid  that  the  day  will  come  when  our 
friendship  toward  her  shall  cease."1  Even  the  kindly 
Baron  Ei-ichi  Shibusawa  writes:  "These  things  [anti- 
Japanese  legislation]  cause  us  anxiety.  .  .  .  There  will 
not  be  any  change  in  our  friendship  toward  America;  but 

.  l  Japan  to  America,  pp.  57  and  61. 


JAPAN  AND  AMERICA  401 

the  masses  of  the  people  may  become  enraged  if  the  strained 
relations  continue  long."1  And  after  his  return  to  Japan 
from  his  visit  to  the  United  States  in  1916,  he  sadly  said: 
"Owing  to  a  lack  of  thorough  understanding  on  both  sides 
of  the  Pacific,  the  two  nations  are  dangerously  drifting 
apart."2 

Baron  Shibusawa's  fear  that  "the  masses  of  the  people 
may  become  enraged"  has  come  perilously  near  fulfilment. 
Many  of  the  newspapers  in  Japan  have  been  violent  in 
their  expressions  of  popular  indignation,  and  have  demanded 
summary  measures  with  a  vehemence  that  the  heads  of  the 
government  may  not  always  be  able  to  restrain.  It  cannot 
be  denied  that  a  feeling  exists  in  Japan  which  might  at  any 
moment  be  fanned  into  a  flame  of  national  passion  if  certain 
legislative  bills  were  to  be  passed,  or  if  some  irresponsible 
individual  Japanese  on  the  Pacific  coast  were  to  commit  a 
crime,  which  would  be  deplored  by  every  high-minded  Japa- 
nese, but  which  might  excite  an  American  mob  to  lynch- 
law  methods  against  not  only  the  criminal  but  other  Japa- 
nese in  the  community  concerned.  "There  is,"  observes 
Mr.  T.  P.  O'Connor,  "in  individual  as  well  as  in  national 
character,  one  type  which  is  always  liable  to  give  us  some 
unpleasant  surprises.  You  meet  a  man  or  a  woman  who 
is  apparently  soft,  yielding,  and  self-controlled.  You  may 
try  them  with  a  certain  want  of  consideration  for  their 
feelings;  and,  finding  that  you  are  met  with  nothing  but  the 
same  agreeable  smile  and  unquestioning  docility,  you  rush 
to  the  conclusion  that  they  are  incapable  of  a  moment  of 
fierce  anger  or  volcanic  passion.  But  you  find  yourself 
suddenly  and  unexpectedly  awakened.  What  you  have  not 
realized  is  that  what  you  have  said  or  done  has  been  pro- 
foundly resented,  and  that,  though  the  resentment  has  not 
been  expressed,  it  has  deepened  in  consequence;  and  that 
some  fine  day  it  bursts  forth  with  all  the  rage  and  devasta- 
tion of  a  volcano.  .  .  .  And  when  a  broad-minded  Japa- 
nese discusses  with  you,  in  the  confidence  of  private  conver- 
sation, the  character  of  his  people,  this  is  also  the  view  he 

1  Ibid.,  pp.  32  and  33,  *  The  New  York  Times,  April  23,  1916. 


402  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

takes.  Marquis  Okuma,  for  instance,  discussing  this  very 
question  with  the  author,  summed  up  the  character  of  his 
people  hi  these  words:  'The  Japanese  are  not  cruel  but 
they  are  turbulent,  vindictive  and  irascible';  a  portrait 
which,  though  terse,  is  sufficient  to  reveal  to  Europeans 
how  little  they  have  grasped  the  depths  in  Japanese  life." 
Doctor  Scherer,  who  quotes  this  opinion,  adds:  "This  fact 
of  the  Japanese  temperament  is  the  focal  point  of  impor- 
tance hi  this  whole  discussion.  All  Europeans  or  Americans 
that  have  lived  among  Japanese  and  had  even  a  modicum 
of  sympathetic  discernment  will  agree  with  Mr.  O'Connor."1 
It  is  not  cowardice  but  justice  and  common  sense  for  patri- 
otic Americans  to  do  everything  in  their  power  to  prevent 
mobs  and  demagogues  from  exasperating  beyond  endur- 
ance a  proud  and  sensitive  people  who  ought  to  be  our 
friends. 

For  years  there  was  a  belief  in  Europe  and  the  Far  East 
that  war  between  the  United  States  and  Japan  was  proba- 
ble, and  it  still  persists  in  some  quarters.  Some  of  the 
prophecies  belong  to  the  category  of  thoughts  that  are 
fathered  by  a  wish.  German  diplomacy  in  1914  confidently 
counted  upon  such  a  war.  Those  who  fear  and  dislike  the 
Japanese  are  eager  to  see  some  nation  fight  her,  and  have 
selected  America  as  the  one  which  they  would  like  to  have 
undertake  the  task.  Men  who  have  a  financial  interest  hi 
promoting  war  scares  and  politicians  who  are  looking  for 
opportunities  to  attract  attention  to  themselves  "patrioti- 
cally" declaim  about  "the  Japanese  peril."  Strongly  as 
every  sane  man  must  deplore  agitation  of  this  sort,  it  would 
be  foolish  to  shut  our  eyes  to  its  possibilities  of  mischief. 
Wars  are  not  always  caused  by  rational  motives.  The  ques- 
tions in  dispute  between  Japan  and  America  are  susceptible 
of  solution  by  peaceful  methods,  but  disputes  between  na- 
tions easily  become  complicated  by  jealousies  and  suspicions 
until  that  vaguely  intangible  but  tremendously  potent  force 
called  "national  honor"  becomes  involved  on  one  or  both 
sides,  and  then  reason  disappears  in  the  flaming  fires  of 

1  The  Japanese  Crisis,  pp.  54-56. 


JAPAN  AND  AMERICA  403 

passion.  Perhaps  we  should  not  attach  conclusive  weight 
to  the  public  utterances  of  government  officials  in  either 
country.  This  is  not  because  cabinet  ministers  and  diplo- 
matic representatives  do  not  know  the  facts,  but  because 
their  position  compels  them  to  put  forth  reassuring  senti- 
ments whether  they  accord  with  the  facts  or  not.  He  must 
be  a  credulous  student  of  international  relations  who  inno- 
cently imagines  that  an  ambassador  or  a  minister  of  state 
would  prematurely  precipitate  hostilities  by  publicly  saying 
that  war  was  in  prospect.  The  history  of  diplomatic  rela- 
tions shows  that  down  to  the  firing  of  the  first  gun,  official 
declarations  abound  in  high-sounding  sentences  about  "the 
friendly  intentions  of  my  Government  and  the  distinguished 
consideration  which  the  courteous  proposal  of  Your  Excel- 
lency's note  will  promptly  receive,"  etc.  We  must  there- 
fore look  for  the  broad  underlying  facts  of  the  situation 
which  make  for  war  or  peace. 

Beginning  with  our  own  country,  even  the  critics  of  the 
United  States  usually  credit  us  with  peaceful  intentions 
toward  Japan.  Americans  are  eager  to  extend  their  in- 
fluence in  the  Pacific  seas,  but  they  are  after  dollars,  not 
territory.  The  Philippines  came  into  their  possession  as 
an  unforeseen  incident  in  a  war  with  Spain,  and  were  in  no 
sense  either  the  object  or  the  occasion  of  the  war.  In  spite 
of  a  certain  swagger  and  high  temper,  the  American  people 
are  not  disposed  to  rush  into  actual  hostilities  with  any 
nation,  as  the  long-drawn  out  negotiations  with  Mexico  and 
Germany  proved.  Congressman  Richmond  Pearson  Hob- 
son  talked  himself  hoarse  in  warning  his  countrymen  of  the 
dire  consequences  to  which  they  were  exposed  from  Japa- 
nese designs;1  but  the  country  listened  with  languid  amuse- 
ment, because  it  did  not  intend  to  make  war  on  Japan,  and 
believed  that  Japan  did  not  intend  to  make  war  on  us. 
The  average  American  is  firmly  convinced  that  such  a  con- 
flict could  bring  absolutely  nothing  that  we  want,  but  only 
things  that  we  do  not  want.  I  venture  the  assertion  that 

1  Cf.  his  article  in  The  Cosmopolitan  for  May,  1908,  and  similar  articles  in 
other  magazines. 


404  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

no  other  nation  in  the  world  is  less  likely  to  make  war  upon 
Japan.  American  ambitions  in  the  Far  East  are  not  mili- 
tary. A  suggestion  that  any  considerable  portion  of  re- 
spectable Americans  cherish  hostile  sentiments  against  the 
Japanese  would  be  greeted  with  derision  anywhere  in  the 
United  States;  except  possibly  in  a  few  local  communities 
on  the  Pacific  coast.  The  feeling  of  the  American  people 
as  a  whole  is  one  of  real  friendliness  toward  Japan. 

Nor  does  Japan  want  war  with  the  United  States.  She 
wishes  to  pay  off  her  heavy  debts,  strengthen  her  general 
financial  position,  and  develop  her  internal  manufactures 
and  foreign  trade.  Friendly  America  is  valuable  to  her  as 
a  source  of  supplies  for  raw  material  and  a  profitable  market 
for  manufactured  goods.  Nearly  all  of  Japan's  exported 
tea  is  sold  in  America,  70  per  cent  of  her  raw  and  manufac- 
tured silk  and  an  important  part  of  other  products.  Alto- 
gether more  than  one-third  of  Japan's  exports  go  to  the 
United  States.  She  buys  from  us,  too,  many  supplies  that 
she  requires.  I  have  written  in  another  chapter  of  the  large 
development  of  her  cotton-manufactures,  and  she  depends 
upon  the  United  States  for  the  best  grade  of  raw  cotton. 
Her  soldiers  in  the  Russia-Japan  War  ate  Chicago  beef  and 
bread  made  from  American  flour.  Hostilities  with  America 
would  destroy  this  trade,  for  a  time  at  least,  and  might  result 
in  conditions  which  would  prevent  a  resumption  of  it  on  the 
scale  that  it  is  now  attaining.  Therefore  Japan,  like  Eng- 
land, desires  a  peace  that  will  leave  her  mercantile  marine 
an  undisturbed  ocean  pathway.  Nor  does  Japan  overlook 
the  fact  that  the  United  States  is  now  the  greatest  reservoir 
of  capital  in  the  world.  Japan  needs  money.  Europe, 
impoverished  and  exhausted  by  war,  cannot  supply  it; 
America  can. 

Japan  values,  too,  her  alliance  with  Great  Britain.  It  is 
her  largest  asset  to-day  in  international  affairs.  Would 
Great  Britain  support  her  in  a  war  with  America?  Japan 
knows  quite  well  that  she  would  not,  and  that  it  would  be 
highly  imprudent  to  run  the  risk  of  alienating  such  an  in- 
valuable ally. 


JAPAN  AND  AMERICA  405 

Moreover,  Japan  needs  time  and  freedom  for  matters 
that  engage  her  attention  nearer  home.  Korea,  Formosa, 
and  China  present  problems  and  anxieties  that  the  Japa- 
nese cannot  ignore,  and  that  are  formidable  enough  to 
absorb  all  their  energies.  They  know  that  they  have  for- 
midable competitors  in  several  European  Powers,  that  it 
will  be  no  easy  task  to  bring  the  millions  of  Koreans  into  a 
state  of  mind  that  will  keep  them  quiet  in  the  event  of  an- 
other war,  and  that  the  Chinese  are  increasingly  jealous 
of  them.  The  Japanese  well  understand  that  in  their 
struggle  with  Russia  they  were  victorious  by  a  very  narrow 
margin;  that  President  Roosevelt's  intervention  brought 
peace  just  when  they  had  reached  their  maximum  of  suc- 
cess; and  that  they  had  a  powerful  support  in  the  sym- 
pathy of  most  of  the  Western  nations  which  they  probably 
would  not  have  again,  for  Japan  is  less  popular  than  she 
was  in  1905.  Having  attained  her  present  political  ambi- 
tion, Japan  is  not  inclined  to  jeopardize  it  unnecessarily  by 
the  uncertainties  of  another  war.  Military  difficulties,  too, 
should  not  be  left  out  of  account.  Grant  that  Japan,  which 
can  keep  her  movements  secret  as  America  can  not,  could 
land  an  army  on  our  Pacific  coast  before  our  government 
could  mobilize  either  a  fleet  or  a  military  force  to  prevent 
it.  How  could  Japan  feed  and  maintain  that  army  at  fight- 
ing size  after  it  got  there?  The  best  army  in  the  world, 
separated  from  its  base  of  supplies  by  4,500  miles  of  ocean, 
would  be  in  a  plight  to  which  such  wise  generals  as  the 
Japanese,  daring  as  they  are,  would  be  slow  to  subject  them- 
selves. 

Americans  finally  came  to  the  conclusion  that  they  ought 
to  have  the  Hawaiian  Islands,  and  it  would  not  be  surprising 
if  in  time  the  Japanese  come  to  feel  that,  for  similar  reasons, 
they  ought  to  have  the  Philippines.  But  the  conditions  are 
hardly  parallel,  for  the  Hawaiian  Islands  did  not  belong  to 
another  friendly  nation,  and  the  ruling  class  was  composed 
of  men  of  American  blood  and  speech  who  had  been  seeking 
annexation  for  many  years.  Whatever  deeper  causes  might 
have  led  to  annexation,  the  immediate  cause  was  pressure 


406  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

from  the  islands  themselves,  to  which  our  government, 
after  much  hesitation,  finally  yielded.  The  Philippine 
Islands  are  alien  to  Japan  in  both  government  and  people, 
and  could  only  be  taken  by  force  in  a  great  war.  Japan 
has  no  notion  of  taking  them  in  that  way.  It  is  true  that 
the  Philippines  are  so  close  to  Japan  that  the  Japanese 
might  plead  almost  as  vital  an  interest  in  them  as  Ameri- 
cans plead  in  the  West  Indies.  It  is  also  true  that  Japan 
could  take  them  with  ease  at  any  time,  for  the  American 
military  and  naval  force  in  the  archipelago  is  pathetically 
small  for  such  a  contingency.  Thanks  to  republican  insti- 
tutions, our  government  could  not  make  the  preparations 
which  would  be  required  to  hold  the  archipelago  against 
attack,  without  a  publicity  and  duration  of  congressional 
debates  which  would  advertise  its  purpose  to  the  world 
months  before  adequate  action  could  be  taken.  Meantime, 
Japan  has  the  troops,  the  merchant  ships  available  for 
transports,  the  naval  vessels  to  escort  them,  and  the  ability 
to  act  with  promptness  and  secrecy  which  would  enable  her 
to  have  400,000  soldiers  begin  disembarkation  in  the  Phil- 
ippines before  the  United  States  could  even  know  anything 
about  the  expedition.  If  war  should  break  out  from  other 
causes,  doubtless  the  first  act  of  Japan  would  be  the  occu- 
pation of  the  Philippines,  just  as  her  first  act  in  the  war  with 
Russia  was  the  occupation  of  Korea.  Nor  would  the  oc- 
cupation of  the  Hawaiian  Islands  be  a  very  difficult  task, 
since  44  per  cent  of  the  population  of  the  islands  is  now 
Japanese,  including  a  large  proportion  of  men  and  many 
veterans  of  the  Russia-Japan  War.  But  we  are  confident 
that  Japan  has  no  such  intentions  and  that  there  will  be 
no  war  if  Americans  keep  their  senses. 

The  Japanese,  in  spite  of  their  martial  spirit,  are  not  as 
eager  to  fight  other  nations  as  their  critics  are  wont  to  allege. 
Japan  has  had  comparatively  few  foreign  wars.  Indeed 
she  had  none  at  all  between  her  invasion  of  Korea  in  the 
sixteenth  century  and  her  war  with  China  at  the  end  of 
the  nineteenth.  For  the  last  three  hundred  years,  during 
which  Europe  and  America  were  repeatedly  convulsed  by 


JAPAN  AND  AMERICA  407 

bloody  strife,  Japan  had  no  internal  revolution  of  any  im- 
portance, except  the  necessary  conflict  which  resulted  in 
the  overthrow  of  the  Shogun,  the  fall  of  feudalism,  and  the 
rise  of  modern  Japan.  Japan  did  not  begin  hostilities 
against  Russia  until  she  had  been  humiliated  and  endangered 
and  goaded  for  years  in  ways  that  no  Western  nation  would 
have  tolerated.  Then  Japan  fought  as  a  last  resort  after 
every  other  means  had  been  exhausted.  It  would  be  ab- 
surd to  represent  the  Japanese  as  a  meek  and  gentle  people. 
They  have  clearly  shown  their  ability  to  take  care  of  them- 
selves against  all  comers.  When  they  did  begin  to  fight 
Russia,  they  continued  in  a  fashion  which  should  make 
other  nations  think  twice  before  pushing  them  into  war 
again.  We  must  remember,  too,  that  their  comparative 
isolation  until  recent  years  exempted  them  from  most  of 
the  occasions  for  international  complications  to  which  the 
more  closely  related  European  peoples  are  constantly  ex- 
posed. But  making  all  due  allowance  for  these  considera- 
tions, the  historic  fact  remains  that  the  Japanese,  with  all 
their  undoubted  genius  for  war,  have  not  shown  a  disposi- 
tion to  go  into  it  for  light  reasons. 

Fair-minded  Americans  can  help  to  ward  off  difficulties 
by  refusing  to  countenance  some  of  the  reports  that  are 
current.  It  is  true  that  there  are  ominous  facts  that  cannot 
be  denied.  But  something  depends  upon  the  way  that 
facts  are  manipulated;  as  in  the  alphabet,  the  same  letters 
may  spell  either  lived  or  devil.  Many  of  the  common 
allegations  regarding  Japan  are  not  facts  at  all.  It  is  pain- 
ful to  note  the  credulity  with  which  the  wildest  statements 
are  received.  For  example,  in  April,  1916,  a  metropolitan 
daily  newspaper  in  the  United  States  published  an  article 
whose  truthfulness  was  said  to  be  vouched  for  by  "a  rank- 
ing officer  of  the  United  States  Army  and  a  ranking  officer 
of  the  United  States  Navy."  This  article,  and  the  transla- 
tion of  a  Japanese  book  on  which  it  was  said  to  be  based, 
declared  that  "there  are  55,000  trained  Japanese  troops 
in  the  Philippines."  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  War  Depart- 
ment of  the  United  States  Government  reported  the  total 


408  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

Japanese  population  in  the  Philippines  as  less  than  8,000. 
Another  statement  was :  "  There  are  in  the  Hawaiian  Islands 
80,000  Japanese,  all  of  whom  have  received  army  instruc- 
tion and  they  know  their  duty."  The  census  then  gave 
the  total  Japanese  population  in  the  Hawaiian  Islands  as 
89,715,  of  whom  24,881  were  women,  and  33,288  were  chil- 
dren. "  There  are  already  61,000  trained  Japanese  troops  in 
California,"  said  the  article.  There  were  not  as  many  Japa- 
nese as  that  in  California,  including  men,  women  and  chil- 
dren. Emphasizing  the  danger  that  the  Japanese  would 
seize  the  Hawaiian  Islands,  the  writer  said :  "The  Hawaiian 
Islands  are  only  distant  from  San  Francisco  a  few  hours." 
Every  schoolboy  knows  that  they  are  distant  six  days.  And 
yet  such  preposterous  allegations  as  these  were  solemnly 
printed  and  widely  quoted  as  illustrative  of  our  alleged  peril 
from  a  Japanese  invasion.  Carl  Crow,  in  his  book  entitled 
Japan  and  America — A  Contrast,  asserts  that  "Japan  and 
the  United  States  have  nothing  in  common,"  and  that  the 
two  countries  are  champions  of  such  "opposing  aims  and  in- 
terests" that  "one  of  the  two  countries  must  recede  from 
its  present  position."  His  closing  chapter  is  entitled  "Is 
Japan  a  Menace?"  and  he  does  not  conceal  his  opinion  that 
it  is.  He  says  that  "the  situation  is  now  and  has  been  for 
years  very  much  the  same  as  that  which  existed  between 
England  and  Germany  before  the  outbreak  of  the  European 
War";  that  "for  every  just  cause  of  quarrel  Germany  had 
against  England,  Japan  has  half  a  dozen  against  us";  that 
in  the  Japanese  vernacular  there  is  "a  steady  outpouring 
of  vilification  and  abuse  of  the  United  States";  and  that 
"Japanese  friendship  for  the  United  States  exists  only  in 
the  meaningless  conventional  phrases  of  diplomatic  usage, 
in  the  propaganda  of  Japanese  statesmen  and  American 
peace-at-any-price  advocates,  and  in  the  wine-warmed 
sentiments  of  Japanese- American  banquets."1 

From  such  statements  one  turns  with  relief  to  the  opin- 
ions of  the  American  missionaries  resident  hi  Japan.  They 
are  in  a  position  to  know  the  attitude  of  the  people.  In 

1  Pp.  1,  4,  204,  301-302. 


JAPAN  AND  AMERICA  409 

1907,  when  sensational  newspapers  in  America  were  fran- 
tically predicting  a  Japanese  attack  upon  the  United  States, 
one  hundred  and  ten  missionaries  in  Japan,  representing 
more  than  twenty  American  Christian  organizations,  and 
residing  in  all  sections  of  the  Empire,  published  the  follow- 
ing statement:  "As  Americans  residing  in  Japan,  we  feel 
bound  to  do  all  that  is  in  our  power  to  remove  misunder- 
standings and  suspicions  which  are  intended  to  interrupt 
the  long  standing  friendship  between  this  nation  and  our 
own.  Hence,  we  wish  to  bear  testimony  to  the  sobriety, 
sense  of  international  justice,  and  freedom  from  aggressive 
designs  exhibited  by  the  great  majority  of  the  Japanese  peo- 
ple, and  to  their  faith  in  the  traditional  justice  and  equity 
of  the  United  States.  Moreover,  we  desire  to  place  on 
record  our  profound  appreciation  of  the  kind  treatment 
which  we  experience  at  the  hands  of  both  government  and 
people;  our  belief  that  the  alleged  'belligerent  attitude'  of 
the  Japanese  does  not  represent  the  real  sentiments  of  the 
nation;  and  our  ardent  hope  that  local  and  spasmodic  mis- 
understandings may  not  be  allowed  to  affect  in  the  slight- 
est degree  the  natural  and  historic  friendship  of  the  two 
neighbors  on  opposite  sides  of  the  Pacific." 

At  the  semicentennial  celebration  of  Protestant  missions 
in  Japan,  October,  1909,  a  resolution  was  unanimously 
adopted  which  included  the  following  sentences:  "While 
the  Government  and  people  of  Japan  have  maintained  a 
general  attitude  of  cordial  friendship  for  the  United  States, 
there  has  sprung  up  in  some  quarters  of  the  latter  country 
a  spirit  of  distrust  of  Japan.  ...  In  this  day  of  extensive 
and  increasing  commingling  of  races  and  civilizations,  one 
of  the  prime  problems  is  the  maintenance  of  amicable  inter- 
national relations.  Essential  to  this  are  not  only  just  and 
honest  dealings  between  governments,  but  also,  as  far  as 
practicable,  the  prevention  as  well  as  the  removal  of  race 
jealousy  and  misunderstanding  between  the  peoples  them- 
selves. False  or  even  exaggerated  reports  of  the  customs, 
beliefs  or  actions  of  other  nations  are  fruitful  causes  of  con- 
tempt, ill-will,  animosity,  and  even  war.  If  libel  on  an  in- 


410  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

dividual  is  a  grave  offense,  how  much  more  grave  is  libel 
on  a  nation?" 

With  this  irenic  and  sensible  utterance  of  fair-minded 
and  well-informed  men,  we  may  leave  the  matter  for  the 
present.  I  earnestly  hope  and  pray  that  our  country  will 
have  no  trouble  with  Japan  over  the  immigration  question. 
If  we  do,  America  will  not  be  free  from  blame.  Our  rela- 
tions with  Japan  have  undoubtedly  been  in  a  sensitive  state, 
but  I  believe  with  Doctor  Scherer  that  "our  Japanese  prob- 
lem will  vanish  into  thin  air  if  we  substitute  in  dealing  with 
it  the  spirit  of  the  gentleman  and  statesman"  for  that  of  the 
sensational  ' '  j  ournalist . " l  The  Honorable  Elihu  Root  gives 
this  significant  testimony:  "For  many  years  I  was  very 
familiar  with  our  own  Department  of  Foreign  Affairs. 
During  that  time  there  were  many  difficult,  perplexing  and 
doubtful  questions  to  be  discussed  and  settled  between  the 
United  States  and  Japan.  During  all  that  period  there 
never  was  a  moment  when  the  Government  of  Japan  was 
not  frank,  sincere,  friendly,  and  most  solicitous  not  to  en- 
large but  to  minimize  and  do  away  with  all  causes  of  con- 
troversy."2 

American  relations  with  Japan  were  placed  on  an  easier 
footing  during  the  visit  of  a  Japanese  commission  headed 
by  Viscount  Kikujiro  Ishii  in  1917.  He  was  hospitably 
welcomed  everywhere,  and  he  won  golden  opinions  by  his 
affable  manners  and  tactful  speeches.  His  brief  address 
at  the  tomb  of  Washington,  August  26,  will  live  in  literature. 
Of  all  the  memorable  words  that  have  been  spoken  at  that 
historic  spot,  none  have  been  more  truly  eloquent  in  thought 
and  expression.  Americans  will  long  cherish  that  address. 
Grant  that  it  idealizes  the  attitude  of  Japan,  and  that  at 
the  very  time  that  Viscount  Ishii  was  in  America  some  things 
were  being  done  in  the  Far  East  that  were  not  exactly  in 
accord  with  his  noble  sentiments.  Nevertheless,  he  spoke 
out  of  his  own  heart,  and  he  gave  voice  to  an  element  in 
Japan  which  ought  to  be  better  known  and  more  fully 
trusted. 

1  The  Japanese  Crisis,  p.  63.  l  Address,  October  21,  1917. 


JAPAN  AND  AMERICA  411 

The  conferences  in  Washington  resulted  in  an  agreement 
which  was  set  forth  in  the  Honorable  Robert  Lansing's  note 
of  November  2,  as  Secretary  of  State,  to  Viscount  Ishii, 
which  included  the  following  paragraph: 

"In  order  to  silence  mischievous  reports  that  have  from  time  to 
time  been  circulated,  it  is  believed  by  us  that  a  public  announcement 
once  more  of  the  desires  and  intentions  shared  by  our  two  Govern- 
ments with  regard  to  China  is  advisable.  The  Governments  of  the 
United  States  and  Japan  recognize  that  territorial  propinquity  cre- 
ates special  relations  between  countries,  and,  consequently,  the 
Government  of  the  United  States  recognizes  that  Japan  has  special 
interests  in  China,  particularly  in  the  part  to  which  her  possessions 
are  contiguous.  The  Governments  of  United  States  and  Japan  deny 
that  they  have  any  purpose  to  infringe  in  any  way  the  independence 
or  territorial  integrity  of  China  and  they  declare,  furthermore,  that 
they  always  adhere  to  the  principle  of  the  so  called  'Open  Door'  or 
equal  opportunity  for  commerce  and  industry  in  China." 

Viscount  Ishii  confirmed  this  statement  in  a  note  to  Mr. 
Lansing  of  the  same  date.  The  agreement  was  made 
public  a  few  days  later,  and  was  hailed  with  immense  satis- 
faction by  the  American  and  Japanese  peoples.  Mutual 
felicitations  and  congratulations  were  enthusiastically  ex- 
changed. Secretary  of  State  Lansing  said  in  a  public 
statement  accompanying  his  announcement  of  the  corre- 
spondence : 

"There  had  unquestionably  been  growing  up  between  the  peoples 
of  the  two  countries  a  feeling  of  suspicion  as  to  the  motives  inducing 
the  activities  of  the  other  in  the  Far  East,  a  feeling  which,  if  unchecked, 
promised  to  develop  a  serious  situation.  Fortunately  this  distrust 
was  not  so  general  in  either  the  United  States  or  Japan  as  to  affect 
the  friendly  relations  of  the  two  Governments,  but  there  is  no  doubt 
that  the  feeling  of  suspicion  was  increasing,  and  the  untrue  reports 
were  receiving  more  and  more  credence  in  spite  of  the  earnest  efforts 
which  were  made  on  both  sides  of  the  Pacific  to  counteract  a  move- 
ment which  would  jeopardize  the  ancient  friendship  of  the  two 
nations.  The  visit  of  Viscount  Ishii  and  his  colleagues  has  accom- 
plished a  great  change  of  opinion  in  this  country.  In  a  few  days 
the  propaganda  of  years  has  been  undone,  and  both  nations  are  now 
able  to  see  how  near  they  came  to  being  led  into  the  trap  which  had 


412  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

been  skilfully  set  for  them.  The  principal  result  of  the  negotiations 
was  the  mutual  understanding  which  was  reached  in  relation  to 
China.  The  statements  in  the  notes  require  no  explanation.  They 
not  only  contain  a  reaffirmation  of  the  'open  door'  policy,  but  intro- 
duce a  principle  of  non-interference  with  the  sovereignty  and  terri- 
torial integrity  of  China." 

The  Japanese  view  was  expressed  by  Mr.  Kenkichi 
Mori,  who  said: 

"The  United  States  has  established  a  notable  precedent  by  recog- 
nizing Japan's  special  position  in  China  with  a  view  to  the  general 
weal  of  the  Chinese  people.  .  .  .  The  main  idea  of  the  agreement 
runs,  roughly  speaking,  parallel  to  that  which  is  embodied  in  the 
American  declaration  of  paramountcy  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic. 
Just  as  the  United  States  has  acquiesced  in  the  retaining  of  the  col- 
onies by  European  countries  on  this  hemisphere  but  objects  to  the 
acquisition  of  new  ones,  so  Japan  is  willing  to  maintain  the  Hay 
Doctrine,  recognizing  the  interests  of  the  Powers  previously  acquired 
in  Chinese  territory,  but  she  is  loath  to  permit  hereafter  any  third 
Power  to  secure  territory  or  special  privilege,  which  may  run  counter 
to  the  principle  already  enunciated."  1 

China,  however,  heard  of  the  agreement  with  very  dif- 
ferent emotions;  nor  was  her  agitation  lessened  by  the  fact 
that  the  Chinese  Foreign  Office  in  Peking  received  its  first 
intimation  of  the  agreement  from  Japanese  sources  before 
either  the  American  Minister  in  Peking  or  the  Chinese  Min- 
ister hi  Washington  knew  about  it,  a  circumstance  which 
considerably  impaired  the  "face"  of  these  two  diplomats. 
November  12,  the  Chinese  Minister  in  Washington,  the 
Honorable  V.  K.  Wellington  Koo,  lodged  formal  protest  at 
the  American  Department  of  State,  concluding  with  the 
statement  that  "it  is  again  declared  that  the  Chinese  Gov- 
ernment will  not  allow  herself  to  be  bound  by  any  agree- 
ment entered  into  by  other  nations."  The  essential  point 
of  protest  was  that  the  United  States  and  Japan  had  showed 
a  disregard  for  the  rights  of  China  by  making  her  most 
sacred  interests  the  subject  of  consideration  and  formal 
agreement  without  consultation  with  her  government. 

1  Article  in  The  World  Court,  December,  1917. 


JAPAN  AND  AMERICA  413 

The  plain  implication  of  course  was  that  China  was  so 
helpless,  or  incompetent,  that  her  wishes  need  not  be  taken 
into  account,  and  that  stronger  and  wiser  parties  must 
decide  matters  for  her.  It  is  not  surprising  that  this  im- 
plication was  galling  to  Chinese  sensibilities.  Mr.  Stewart 
E.  S.  Yin,  editor  of  The  Chinese  Students'  Monthly,  New 
York,  undoubtedly  expressed  the  Chinese  opinion  when  he 
wrote: 

"The  agreement  was  made  between  the  United  States  and  Japan, 
but  the  subject  of  the  agreement  is  CHINA.  It  vitally  concerns  the 
political  as  well  as  the  commercial  and  industrial  future  of  the  Chinese 
Republic.  Justice,  therefore,  demanded  that  China  should  have  had 
a  voice  in  the  negotiations  of  an  agreement  affecting  herself.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  neither  our  Government  at  Peking  nor  our  Minister 
at  Washington  was  advised  of  the  agreement  until  several  days  after 
it  had  already  been  concluded  and  signed,  although  'conversations' 
between  Secretary  Lansing  and  Viscount  Ishii  began  very  early  in 
September.  ...  It  is  highly  questionable  whether  it  will  enable  the 
American  and  Japanese  Governments  to  '  maintain  a  perfectly  appre- 
ciative attitude  toward  each  other,'  and  whether  it  will  result  in  '  per- 
petual international  peace.'  The  only  way  to  bring  about  interna- 
tional peace  is  to  have  the  nations  come  together  and  make  agree- 
ments, not  to  take  advantage  of  the  weak  and  unprepared,  but  to 
insure  international  justice."  1 

As  the  negotiations  were  conducted  in  Washington,  and 
as  the  government  of  China  was  represented  in  that  city 
by  an  able  Minister,  who  could  have  been  easily  called  into 
conference,  one  does  not  wonder  that  the  Chinese  ask  why 
the  agreement  was  consummated  without  consulting  him. 
All  conjectures,  however,  should  take  into  account  the  fact 
that  President  Wilson  and  Secretary  of  State  Lansing  were 
real  friends  of  China,  who  would  not  be  disposed  to  adopt 
any  course  which  they  felt  would  be  unjust  to  China,  or 
jeopardize  the  good  relations  which  they  earnestly  desired 
to  exist  between  the  two  countries. 

Moreover,  some  of  China's  best  friends  regarded  the 
agreement  with  favor.  That  devoted  advocate  of  China's 
interests,  Doctor  Jeremiah  W.  Jenks,  said:  "America  has 

1  Article  in  The  World  Court,  December,  1917. 


414  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

certainly  now  a  basis  for  protest  against  any  aggressive  abuse 
that  did  not  exist  before.  A  careful  study  of  the  situation 
seems  to  show  that  no  concessions  whatever  were  made, 
that  generally  accepted  facts  were  recognized,  and  that  no 
harm  has  been  done  to  Chinese  interests."  l  Bishop  James 
W.  Bashford,  of  Peking,  also  strongly  pro-Chinese,  expressed 
the  opinion  that  the  note  will  in  the  end  result  in  good. 
He  frankly  admitted  that  "it  would  have  been  better  could 
Secretary  Lansing  have  removed  the  real  source  of  difficulty 
between  the  two  nations  [that  both  the  United  States  and 
individual  States  discriminate  against  the  yellow  races]." 
But  he  held  that  "it  was  utterly  impossible  in  the  present 
state  of  American  sentiment  toward  Japan,  and  with  the 
Constitution  as  it  is,  for  Mr.  Lansing  or  Mr.  Wilson  to  make 
any  agreement  with  Japan  removing  these  two  grievances. 
Doubtless  the  problems  of  Japanese  aggression  in  China 
and  our  exclusion  law  and  discrimination  legislation  in  the 
United  States  were  discussed  with  more  or  less  frankness 
by  Mr.  Lansing  and  Viscount  Ishii;  but  one  can  see  the 
utter  impossibility  of  Japan  and  the  United  States  alone 
settling  these  world  problems  in  advance  of  a  world  con- 
ference. Under  these  conditions  this  note,  which  sends  the 
Japanese  mission  home  with  good-will  toward  our  govern- 
ment, and  increases  the  friendship  of  the  two  peoples,  may 
go  farther  in  helping  Japan  make  the  inevitable  transition 
from  the  German  to  the  Allied  ideal,  both  in  China  and  at 
home,  than  any  affirmation  on  our  part  of  'Thou  shalt'  or 
'Thou  shalt  not/" 

It  is  true  that  the  agreement  is  not  a  treaty,  and  that  a 
future  administration  in  either  country  may  or  not  con- 
sider itself  bound  by  an  interchange  of  notes  which  were 
not  formally  ratified  in  the  method  prescribed  by  law,  and 
which  simply  represented  "the  desires  and  intentions"  of 
officials  who  were  in  office  at  the  time.  But  such  a  "gen- 
tlemen's agreement"  is  weighty  nevertheless,  not  only  be- 
cause it  constitutes  a  public  declaration  of  attitude  and 
policy,  but  because  it  rests  upon  mutual  confidence  in  the 

1  Article  in  The  World  Court,  December,  1917. 


JAPAN  AND  AMERICA  415 

good  faith  of  both  parties  and  involves  the  honor  of  the  two 
governments. 

It  is  rather  unfortunate  that  varying  interpretations  have 
been  placed  upon  it  by  the  interested  parties.  The  Japa- 
nese emphasize  the  clause:  "The  Government  of  the  United 
States  recognizes  that  Japan  has  special  interests  in  China," 
and  regard  it  as  equivalent  to  conceding  their  paramountcy; 
while  Americans  emphasize  the  clauses  which  "adhere  to 
the  principle  of  the  'Open  Door'  for  commerce  and  indus- 
try," and  "deny  any  purpose  to  infringe  in  any  way  the 
independence  or  territorial  integrity  of  China."  It  is  easy 
to  foresee  that  disputes  may  arise  if  either  government  shall 
overlook  the  fact  that  each  of  these  clauses  is  to  be  inter- 
preted consistently  with  the  other.  The  holding  power  of 
the  agreement  will  be  tested  as  soon  as  necessity  arises  for 
applying  it  to  some  concrete  case. 

Meantime,  the  agreement  has  undoubtedly  greatly  im- 
proved the  relations  of  the  United  States  and  Japan.  In 
so  far  as  those  relations  needed  improvement,  and  Secre- 
tary Lansing's  words  indicated  that  they  needed  it  badly, 
all  concerned  have  reason  to  be  relieved  and  gratified,  al- 
though the  fundamental  causes  of  disagreement  still  re- 
main. If  the  American- Japanese  sore  has  been  salved  by 
making  an  American-Chinese  sore,  the  relief  will  be  only 
temporary.  But  in  a  time  of  world  war  it  was  urgently 
important  to  remove  any  suspicion  between  two  such 
governments  as  the  Japanese  and  American.  We  can  only 
hope  that  the  party  among  the  Chinese,  headed  by  Tang 
Shao  Yi,  who  indignantly  declare  that  the  Washington 
government  has  "sold  China  out,"  will  find  as  time  passes 
that  their  fears  have  not  been  realized. 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

EFFECT  OF  THE  WORLD  WAR  ON  THE  POSITION 
OF  JAPAN 

ALL  the  consequences  of  the  World  War  of  1914-1918 
cannot  now  be  forecast,  but  one  that  is  already  apparent 
is  the  establishment  of  Japanese  hegemony  in  the  Far 
East.  Japan's  former  efforts  to  secure  it  were  hampered 
by  the  conflicting  interests  of  several  European  Powers, 
and  by  their  ability  to  protect  them.  The  war  diverted 
their  attention  and  energy,  while  it  summoned  Japan  to  a 
great  enlargement  of  her  activity  just  where  it  could  not 
but  accrue  to  her  benefit. 

Great  Britain  early  gave  Japan  a  fine  opportunity  in  con- 
nection with  the  German  fortified  post  at  Tsing-tau  in  the 
province  of  Shantung,  China,  which  had  been  made  one  of 
the  most  formidable  fortifications  in  the  world.  Of  course 
the  British  could  not  afford  to  leave  the  Germans  in  pos- 
session of  a  naval  base  from  which  the  immense  commerce 
of  the  Allies  in  the  Far  East  could  be  successfully  raided; 
and  as  the  British  had  their  hands  full  hi  Europe,  it  was 
natural  that  they  should  expect  their  more  conveniently 
situated  ally,  Japan,  to  attend  to  this  matter  for  them. 
The  Japanese  promptly  despatched  an  ultimatum  to  the 
Germans,  and  followed  it  by  a  declaration  of  war  August 
23,  1914.  German  artillery  would  have  made  an  attack 
from  the  sea  or  a  landing  within  the  German  concession  a 
hazardous  proceeding;  so  upon  the  time-honored  plea  of 
"military  necessity,"  which  Western  nations  have  so  often 
used,  Japan,  in  spite  of  China's  protests,  landed  an  expedi- 
tionary force  on  Chinese  territory  a  hundred  miles  north 
of  Tsing-tau,  and  marched  overland.  The  Germans  made 
a  sharp  resistance,  but  they  did  not  have  enough  men  to 
hold  such  extensive  works  against  a  greatly  superior  force, 
and  November  7  the  Japanese  captured  the  place. 

416 


EFFECT  OF  THE  WORLD  WAR  ON  JAPAN       417 

The  Japanese  not  only  took  Tsing-tau  and  its  hinterland 
but  all  the  German  property  and  concessions  in  the  prov- 
ince, including  the  railway  from  Tsing-tau  to  Tsinan-fu, 
on  the  ground  that  they  could  not  leave  their  enemies  in 
possession  of  valuable  privileges  in  the  interior,  and  that 
it  was  their  duty  to  take  over  everything  that  the  Germans 
had  in  Shantung,  pending  the  close  of  the  war.  While  the 
Germans  had  employed  less  than  a  hundred  of  their  own 
nationals  on  the  railway,  including  the  officials  of  the  com- 
pany, and  had  used  Chinese  for  all  the  other  places,  the 
Japanese  staffed  and  operated  the  railway  exclusively  with 
their  own  people.  They  posted  detachments  of  Japanese 
troops  along  the  line  and  placed  a  garrison  in  Tsinan-fu, 
the  capital  of  the  province,  two  hundred  and  fifty  miles  in 
the  interior.  Substantial  stone  and  concrete  barracks  have 
been  erected  at  convenient  intervals.  Courts,  post-offices, 
banks,  and  numerous  commercial  enterprises  have  been 
established.  Fifty  thousand  Japanese  were  reported  to  be 
in  or  near  Tsing-tau  by  the  end  of  1917.  Colonies  of  vary- 
ing size  were  to  be  found  in  other  important  cities,  and 
traders,  engineers,  and  other  Japanese  on  various  quests 
were  in  evidence  in  almost  every  part  of  the  province. 
They  assert  that  Shantung  belongs  to  them  "as  the  prize 
of  war,"  and  that  "under  no  circumstances  must  this  pro- 
vince ever  be  alienated  from  Japanese  control."  Tokyo 
officials  declare  their  intention  to  return  Tsing-tau  to 
China  in  due  time.  The  Chinese  do  not  conceal  their 
anxiety,  failing  to  understand  how  Japanese  procedure  in 
Shantung  can  be  reconciled  with  temporary  purposes. 
Foreign  observers  wait  to  see  how  soon  "circumstances" 
will  render  it  "practicable"  for  the  Japanese  to  relax 
their  hold. 

Some  surprise  was  expressed  in  America  because  the 
Japanese  Government  did  not  send  an  army  to  Europe  to 
the  help  of  her  sorely  beset  allies  in  the  great  war.  Whether 
Great  Britain  and  France  really  wanted  a  Japanese  army 
in  France,  and  whether  the  Japanese  Government  really 
wanted  to  send  one  and  thus  leave  itself  unable  to  deal 


418  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

with  any  emergency  that  might  arise  nearer  home,  are 
questions  on  which  opinions  differ.  It  should  be  said,  in 
justice  to  Japan,  that  it  is  a  long  distance  from  the  Sunrise 
Kingdom  to  France;  that  by  the  ocean  route  it  would  have 
been  difficult  to  spare  enough  ships  to  transport  an  army 
that  would  be  large  enough  to  form  an  appreciable  factor  in 
military  operations  in  which  millions  of  men  were  engaged 
on  each  side,  and  to  keep  such  an  army  adequately  supplied 
with  munitions,  equipment,  and  the  special  kind  of  food  to 
which  the  Japanese  are  accustomed.  Military  men  esti- 
mated that  five  tons  of  shipping  were  required  to  transport 
and  maintain  one  foreign  soldier  in  France,  so  that  2,500,000 
tons  would  have  been  needed  for  500,000  men;  and  even 
that  force  would  have  been  almost  insignificant  in  com- 
parison with  the  huge  armies  of  the  other  Allies.  America 
had  to  commandeer  every  possible  vessel,  borrow  every  one 
that  England  could  spare,  and  inaugurate  a  stupendous 
ship-building  programme  in  order  to  get  her  army  less  than 
half  the  distance;  and  America's  resources  were  far  greater 
than  Japan's.  As  for  the  land  route  by  the  Trans-Siberian 
Railway,  troops  sent  by  that  line  would  have  been  for 
Russia,  which  had  ample  men  of  her  own.  Russia  needed 
rifles,  cannon,  ammunition,  and  supplies  for  an  army  in  the 
field,  and  these  Japan  did  sell  to  her  in  such  quantities  that 
the  Trans-Siberian  Railway  was  choked  with  the  traffic. 

Doctor  lyenaga  said  in  an  address  in  New  York  that 
among  Japan's  reasons  for  not  sending  armies  to  Europe 
were  that  it  would  impair  the  hard-won  military  prestige 
of  Japan  to  put  comparatively  small  forces  into  the  European 
battle-fields,  and  that  Japan  was  anxious  not  to  re-awaken 
another  "Yellow  Peril"  propaganda  with  the  old  one  almost 
dead.  "Japan  is  keeping  safe  the  channel  of  communica- 
tion from  Aden  to  Shanghai,  and  her  troops  are  kept  ready 
in  case  of  need  for  sustaining  the  status  quo  in  India."  He 
significantly  added:  "Japan  would  not  send  her  troops  as 
mercenaries.  We  are,  to  be  sure,  all  united  in  a  common 
cause.  But  I  feel  confident  that  even  the  United  States 
will  want  a  quid  pro  quo.  It  has  been  said  that  through  the 


EFFECT  OF  THE  WORLD  WAR  ON  JAPAN       419 

war  Japan  has  already  gained  a  commanding  position  in 
the  Orient,  but  this  position  has  never  been  recognized. 
At  present  we  are  holding  our  troops  to  safeguard  allied 
interests  in  the  East."  l 

As  a  matter  of  fact  Japan  did  give  considerable  assistance 
to  the  Allies,  probably  all  that  they  expected  or  desired. 
In  addition  to  furnishing  indispensable  supplies  to  Russia 
during  the  period  of  the  latter's  participation  in  the  war, 
Japan  drove  Germany  out  of  China,  seized  the  German 
colonies  in  the  Far  East,  swept  her  naval  and  mercantile 
shipping  from  the  Pacific  Ocean,  kept  that  important  part 
of  the  world  open  for  the  commerce  of  the  Allied  nations 
and  the  transport  of  Australian  and  New  Zealand  troops, 
maintained  at  heavy  cost  her  own  army  and  navy  on  a  war 
basis,  ready  for  instant  action  in  case  her  allies  should  desire 
it,  and,  according  to  official  figures  given  out  in  August, 
1918,  advanced  credits  to  her  allies  amounting  to  yen 
1,186,000,000  ($593,000,000),  of  which  Great  Britain  re- 
ceived $371,149,000,  Russia,  $127,084,000,  and  France 
about  $78,000,000.  If  it  is  objected  that  all  these  things 
were  to  Japan's  advantage,  I  reply  that  this  was  Japan's 
good  fortune,  and  none  the  less  to  the  advantage  of  her 
allies,  especially  as  they  enabled  Great  Britain,  France, 
and  Italy  to  concentrate  their  naval  strength  in  European 
waters,  where  they  most  needed  it. 

Another  phase  of  the  greatly  enhanced  position  which 
Japan  has  attained  as  a  result  of  the  European  War  is  the 
control  of  the  trade  of  the  Far  East.  She  was  zealously 
seeking  it  before  the  war  broke  out,  and  had  already  secured 
a  substantial  share.  Nevertheless,  the  British  were  still 
the  chief  factors  in  the  commerce  of  eastern  Asia,  although 
they  were  meeting  increasingly  vigorous  competition  from 
the  Germans  as  well  as  the  Japanese.  At  the  beginning  of 
the  war  there  were  244  German  companies  hi  China,  3,740 
German  residents,  and  a  capital  investment  of  $256,760,000. 
The  enforced  withdrawal  of  the  German  ships  and  the  ab- 
sorption of  the  British  in  the  European  conflict  naturally 

1  Address,  May  30,  1917. 


420  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

resulted  in  eliminating  German  companies  and  ships  al- 
together, and  in  transferring  a  large  part  of  British  ener- 
gies and  shipping  to  places  nearer  home.  This  left  the 
Japanese  a  free  field,  and  they  have  taken  over  the  bulk 
of  the  trade  that  was  formerly  conducted  by  British  as 
well  as  by  German  firms.  In  doing  so,  they  did  what  white 
men,  Americans  included,  have  repeatedly  done  wherever 
they  have  had  a  chance.  Like  the  United  States,  Japan 
at  once  found  an  unlimited  demand  at  high  prices  for  muni- 
tions and  every  staple  article  that  she  could  produce,  and 
her  export  trade  quickly  rose  to  huge  proportions.  India 
was  flooded  with  Japanese  matches,  toys,  cigarettes,  glass- 
ware, silk,  cotton,  and  leather  goods.  Shipments  to  South 
America  were  more  than  doubled.  I  have  referred  in  an- 
other chapter  to  the  remarkable  increase  in  the  trade  with 
China.  I  may  add  that  an  interesting  illustration  of 
Japanese  shrewdness,  which  a  Connecticut  Yankee  might 
envy,  was  given  in  a  deal  in  copper.  The  war  caused  an 
extraordinary  demand  for  this  metal,  and  sent  the  price 
soaring.  The  coin  in  common  circulation  in  China  is  the 
copper  "cash,"  about  the  size  of  an  English  penny,  and  so 
small  in  value  that  a  gold  dollar  will  buy  anywhere  from 
fifteen  hundred  to  two  thousand  of  them,  according  to  the 
rate  of  exchange.  In  my  travels  in  the  interior  of  China  I 
had  to  have  an  extra  donkey  to  carry  the  cash  needed  for 
my  party,  and  its  load  had  to  be  replenished  several  times 
at  the  money-changers'  in  the  cities  through  which  I  passed, 
bullion  silver  being  carried  along  for  this  purpose.  It 
was  said  that  the  copper  cash  in  the  Province  of  Shantung 
alone  would  weigh  nearly  fifty  thousand  tons.  To  buy 
these  cash  of  the  Chinese  and  sell  them  to  the  Europeans, 
who  needed  the  copper  for  shells,  would  yield  a  handsome 
profit.  The  Japanese  proceeded  to  do  it.  The  Manchuria 
Daily  News  reported  that  in  a  single  year  the  purchases 
amounted  to  25,600  tons,  and  that  the  transaction  was 
completed  at  a  profit  of  yen  2,167,000  ($1,083,500). 

This  is  only  an  incident  in  many  and  varied  operations 
which  ramified  widely  throughout  China.    Mr.  C.  E.  Ben- 


EFFECT  OF  THE  WORLD  WAR  ON  JAPAN       421 

jamin,  general  passenger  agent  of  the  trans-Pacific  busi- 
ness of  the  Canadian  Pacific  Ocean  Service,  stated  in 
March,  1917,  after  his  return  from  a  visit  to  the  Far  East : 
"The  Japanese  small  traders  and  travelling  merchants  are 
swarming  over  China,  especially  throughout  the  Yang-tze 
River  district,  which  really  includes  the  most  important 
part  of  China  commercially.  They  move  where  they  like, 
far  beyond  the  trading  limits  established  by  treaty.  They 
come  and  go  as  they  will,  with  small  regard  for  the  restric- 
tions of  Chinese  regulations  or  written  conventions,  under 
the  protection  of  the  vigilant  and  courageous  government 
at  Tokyo.  The  Japanese  have  acquired  extensive  hold- 
ings along  the  Yang-tze  and  now  have  sufficient  troops 
garrisoned  at  Hankow  to  enforce  any  demand  they  may 
make." 

Prior  to  the  war,  40  per  cent  of  China's  coasting  trade 
of  taels  1,200,000,000  was  carried  in  British  ships,  and  only 
10  per  cent  in  Japanese;  while  of  China's  importations  of 
cotton  goods,  70  per  cent  was  from  Europe  and  America 
and  20  per  cent  from  Japan.  Mr.  Yoshida,  of  the  Japanese 
Department  of  Commerce  and  Agriculture,  who  reports 
these  facts,  adds  with  pardonable  gratification:  "Things 
have  been  developing  in  favor  of  Japan  since  the  outbreak 
of  hostilities."  l 

Many  people  in  Great  Britain  were  so  preoccupied  by  the 
war  that  they  were  slow  to  concern  themselves  very  much 
with  this  situation;  but  British  residents  in  the  Far  East 
knew  all  about  it,  and  they  looked  upon  Japanese  absorp- 
tion of  British  trade  with  emotions  which  can  better  be 
imagined  than  described. 

Russia,  too,  soon  became  a  profitable  customer  of  Japan. 
Before  the  war,  she  had  been  buying  Japanese  goods  at  the 
rate  of  yen  120,000,000  a  year,  and  now  this  trade  received 
a  great  impetus,  as  Russia  needed  vast  quantities  of  war 
munitions,  besides  various  kinds  of  manufactured  goods. 
The  usual  channels  of  trade  with  western  Europe  and  the 
United  States  were  cut  off  by  Germany,  but  the  Trans- 

1  Report  published  July  18,  1918. 


422  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

Siberian  Railway  remained  an  open  line  from  Japan.  The 
result  was  that  Russia  began  to  buy  in  Japan,  and  presently 
long  freight-trains  were  loaded  with  Japanese  rifles,  ammu- 
nition, chemicals,  hospital  supplies,  clothing,  copper  and 
leather  goods,  and  a  variety  of  other  manufactured  products. 
By  the  end  of  1917  Japan  had  furnished  Russia  munitions 
and  other  supplies  to  the  value  of  $300,000,000.  As  Russia 
had  comparatively  little  to  sell  to  Japan  in  return,  Japan's 
favorable  balance  was  a  comfortable  sum  for  a  nation  that 
had  been  in  financial  straits. 

Nor  did  Japan  suffer  in  competition  with  her  greatest 
free  rival,  the  United  States.  American  trade  with  Japan 
in  1916  was  valued  at  $290,845,813,  against  $154,047,067  in 
1915,  and  $147,477,231  in  1914.  Imports  from  Japan  in 
1916  were  $182,090,737,  an  increase  of  73  per  cent  over  the 
preceding  year,  while  our  exports  to  Japan  were  $108,755,- 
000,  a  gain  of  136  per  cent.  In  spite,  therefore,  of  our  ad- 
vance in  exports,  the  balance  of  trade  was  against  the 
United  States  to  the  tune  of  $73,335,737. 

In  these  circumstances,  Japan  began  to  heap  up  the 
wealth  that  she  so  greatly  needed.  One  steamship  company 
declared  dividends  of  360  per  cent,  and  another  paid  divi- 
dends at  the  rate  of  720  per  cent.  A  metal-refining  com- 
pany declared  200  per  cent,  besides  writing  off  for  the 
largest  part  of  its  plant.  Manufacturing  concerns  increased 
their  plants,  employed  more  operatives,  and  ran  at  high 
pressure.  Japan's  ocean  shipping,  which  aggregated  1,030,- 
000  tons  in  1905,  had  reached  1,690,000  in  1915,  and  is  now 
2,000,000  tons,  and  her  224  shipyards  are  working  night  and 
day.  One  hundred  and  eighty-two  steamships  were  under 
construction  in  1917,  and  72  with  an  aggregate  tonnage  of 
333,841  were  launched  during  the  year  ending  March  31, 
1918.  Bank  clearings  in  a  single  year  showed  a  gain  of 
78  per  cent.  Postal  savings  in  1918  were  yen  299,860,776 
greater  than  in  1914,  and  had  passed  the  half-billion  mark. 
The  number  of  depositors  had  become  18,464,431,  an  in- 
crease of  5,493,524;  and  their  average  deposit  had  risen 
nearly  a  hundred  per  cent.  Japan,  like  the  United  States. 


EFFECT  OF  THE  WORLD  WAR  ON  JAPAN       423 

suddenly  passed  from  a  borrowing  to  a  creditor  nation. 
Foreign  indebtedness  was  considerably  reduced,  and  large 
purchases  were  made  of  the  bonds  and  treasury  notes 
issued  by  her  European  Allies.  By  the  beginning  of  1918 
the  gold  holdings  of  the  government  and  the  Bank  of 
Japan  were  over  $400,000,000. 

Viscount  Yataro  Mishima,  governor  of  the  Bank  of 
Japan,  stated  in  his  Annual  Report  in  1918  that  Japan  took 
$230,000,000  of  the  war  loans  of  Great  Britain,  France,  and 
Russia  in  1917,  while  in  addition  $340,000,000  was  furnished 
as  capital  for  new  business  enterprises.  The  amount  of 
Japan's  national  loans  floated  during  the  year  was  about 
$120,000,000,  and  issues  of  debentures  by  various  com- 
panies and  of  municipal  bonds  aggregated  about  $70,000,- 
000.  He  truly  said  that  "this  clearly  indicates  that  the 
augmentation  in  our  resources  is  really  remarkable."  Turn- 
ing to  the  record  of  the  year's  foreign  trade,  he  estimated 
that,  including  the  trade  in  Korea  and  Taiwan,  exports 
aggregated  $831,450,000,  and  imports  $543,660,000,  the 
total  being  about  $1,375,110,000.  Compared  with  the  re- 
sults of  the  previous  year,  these  figures  show  an  increase  of 
$244,970,000  on  the  side  of  exports,  and  $146,730,000  on 
that  of  imports.  Imports  of  gold  and  silver  aggregated 
$196,110,000,  and  exports  $76,865,000. 

Of  course,  the  war  trade  was  abnormal,  but  Japan's 
added  wealth,  her  increased  industrial  equipment  and  effi- 
ciency, and  her  pre-eminence  in  Asiatic  markets  remain  as 
national  assets  of  immense  value.  Every  year  increases  her 
ability  to  manufacture  what  the  world  needs,  to  ship  it 
where  it  is  needed,  and  to  sell  it  in  competition  with  business 
men  of  Western  nations. 

Most  significant  of  all  in  its  effect  not  only  upon  the  Far 
East  but  upon  the  world  at  large  is  the  ascendancy  of  the 
Japanese  in  Chinese  governmental  affairs.  Possession  of 
the  strategic  base  which  Germany  held  in  the  province  of 
Shantung  is  a  political  and  military  advantage  of  high 
value;  but  this  is  not  all.  Early  in  the  year  1915,  the  world 
was  startled  to  learn  that  on  January  18  Japan  had  made 


424  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

twenty-one  demands  upon  the  government  of  China. 
They  were  arranged  in  five  groups.  The  first  group  re- 
lated to  the  interests  which  Japan  had  won  from  Germany 
in  Shantung;  the  second  to  "the  special  position  enjoyed 
by  Japan  in  South  Manchuria  and  Eastern  Inner  Mon- 
golia"; the  third  to  the  Hanyeh-ping  Iron  and  Steel  Com- 
pany; the  fourth  required  China  "not  to  cede  or  lease  to  a 
third  Power  any  harbor  or  bay  or  island  along  the  coast  of 
China";  and  the  fifth  asked  China  to  "employ  influential 
Japanese  as  advisers  in  political,  financial  and  military 
affairs " ;  to  agree  that  "the  police  departments  of  important 
places  in  China  shall  be  jointly  administered  by  Japanese 
and  Chinese";  to  "purchase  from  Japan  50  per  cent  or 
more  of  munitions  of  war  needed  by  the  Chinese  Govern- 
ment," "Japanese  experts  to  be  employed  and  Japanese 
material  to  be  purchased";  to  grant  Japan  the  right  to 
construct  certain  railways;  to  give  Japanese  hospitals, 
churches,  and  schools  the  right  to  own  land  in  the  interior 
of  China;  to  consult  Japan  before  borrowing  foreign  cap- 
ital for  mines,  railways,  and  harbor  work;  and  to  permit 
Japanese  to  propagate  Buddhism  in  China. 

These  demands  threw  the  Chinese  into  the  utmost  con- 
sternation, as  they  were  understood  to  mean  the  impairment 
of  Chinese  sovereignty  and  the  virtual  overlordship  of 
Japan.  President  Yuan  Shih  Kai  protested  against  several 
of  them  and  flatly  refused  to  sign  those  in  Group  V.  Rep- 
resentatives of  the  American  and  British  Governments  used 
their  friendly  offices  with  the  Japanese,  and  April  26  the 
Japanese  presented  a  revised  list,  in  which  some  of  the  most 
objectionable  of  the  original  demands  were  modified,  and 
a  few  were  dropped.  May  1  the  Chinese  Government  ac- 
cepted some  of  the  demands,  but  dealt  with  others  in  a 
way  that  was  not  satisfactory  to  the  Japanese,  who  May  7 
presented  an  ultimatum  closing  with  the  peremptory  state- 
ment: "The  Imperial  Government  hereby  again  offer  their 
advice  and  hope  that  the  Chinese  Government,  upon  this 
advice,  will  give  a  satisfactory  reply  by  six  o'clock  p.  M.  on 
the  9th  day  of  May.  It  is  hereby  declared  that  if  no  satis- 


EFFECT  OF  THE  WORLD  WAR  ON  JAPAN       425 

factory  reply  is  received  before  or  at  the  specified  time, 
the  Imperial  Government  will  take  steps  they  may  deem 
necessary." 

The  Chinese  felt  that  they  were  in  a  grievous  case.  They 
did  not  want  to  yield;  but  they  knew  that  they  were  help- 
less, with  no  military  or  naval  strength  to  withstand  the 
disciplined  and  efficient  forces  of  the  Japanese.  They 
knew,  too,  that  they  could  get  no  assistance  from  Western 
nations.  The  British  made  no  secret  of  their  concern; 
but  Japan  was  their  ally  in  the  European  War,  and  they  did 
not  deem  it  prudent  to  offend  her.  The  American  Gov- 
ernment intimated  its  anxiety  and  the  American  press  was 
outspoken  in  protest;  but  nobody  was  in  a  position  to  in- 
terpose effective  objection. 

Reams  of  explanations  have  been  written  from  the  Japa- 
nese view-point,  and  other  reams  of  criticism  from  the  Chi- 
nese view-point.  Doctor  Sidney  L.  Gulick  says:  "I  have  it 
on  pretty  high  authority  that  Group  V  was  put  up  for  pur- 
poses of  trading.  Japan  arranged  that  Yuan  Shih  Kai 
could  say  to  China  that  he  had  forced  Japan  to  back  down 
on  the  most  important  demands  and  thus  'save  his  face' 
for  having  yielded  the  rest."  Unfortunately,  China  was 
not  in  a  position  to  "trade"  with  a  fair  chance,  and  Yuan 
Shih  Kai's  "face"  was  beyond  saving. 

The  position  of  the  Japanese  as  explained  to  me  by  sev- 
eral prominent  Japanese  may  be  epitomized  as  follows: 
China  is  huge  in  population  and  resources,  but  lacking  in 
national  unity  and  efficiency.  In  this  age,  when  interna- 
tional relations  are  founded  upon  force  and  each  govern- 
ment is  seeking  its  own  interests  with  scant  regard  for  the 
rights  of  others,  China  cannot  take  care  of  herself.  Euro- 
pean nations  have  made  repeated  aggressions  upon  her,  and 
to-day  they  occupy  her  most  valuable  harbors.  In  the 
capital  itself,  the  foreign  legations  are  virtually  fortified 
posts,  armed,  provisioned  and  guarded  by  military  forces 
in  a  way  that  would  not  be  permitted  in  the  capital  of  any 
government  able  to  defend  itself  from  such  an  insult. 
Further  foreign  aggressions  are  probable  and  China  cannot 


426  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

resist  them.  It  is  equally  clear  that  the  government  is  not 
strong  enough  to  develop  the  resources  of  the  country  and 
to  organize  its  industries  and  life  as  they  ought  to  be  de- 
veloped and  organized  both  for  the  sake  of  China  and  for 
that  of  other  nations  which  need  her  products.  In  these 
circumstances,  China  must  have  guidance  and  protection 
from  the  outside,  or  else  continue  in  a  state  of  disorganiza- 
tion equally  injurious  to  herself  and  dangerous  to  the  peace 
of  the  world.  The  Japanese  are  the  proper  ones  to  give 
this  assistance.  They  are  close  at  hand,  a  sister  Asiatic 
people,  with  large  interests  in  China,  and  with  their  own 
safety  involved  in  Chinese  affairs.  It  is  therefore  the  duty 
of  Japan  to  do  hi  China  what  imperatively  needs  to  be 
done.  It  is  to  be  regretted  that  the  Chinese  do  not  appre- 
ciate the  necessity  for  Japan's  assistance  and  organizing 
ability;  but  Japan  cannot  permit  herself  to  be  diverted 
from  her  plain  national  and  international  obligations  by 
the  jealousy  or  obtuseness  of  Chinese  officials.  The  United 
States  Government  has  its  Monroe  Doctrine  and  has  re- 
peatedly given  notice  that  it  will  not  permit  any  other 
nation  to  obtain  further  territories  in  Mexico,  Central  or 
South  America,  or  to  secure  concessions  or  make  loans 
which  would  give  a  right  to  impinge  upon  the  territory  or 
sovereignty  of  any  nation  in  the  Western  hemisphere. 
China  is  Japan's  Monroe  Doctrine.  It  is  even  more  vital 
to  Japan  than  South  America  is  to  the  United  States. 
Just  as  the  United  States  will  not  permit  any  other  Power 
to  interfere  in  South  America,  so  Japan  will  not  permit 
any  other  Power  to  interfere  in  China. 

I  have  not  attempted  to  quote  the  exact  words  of  my 
Japanese  friends.  I  have  simply  given  my  impression  of 
the  substance  of  the  position  that  they  took,  and  I  believe 
it  to  be  approximately  correct.  What  they  said  certainly 
justified  such  an  interpretation.  I  am  confirmed  in  this 
opinion  by  the  following  statement  of  Mr.  K.  Yoshizawa, 
Counselor  of  the  Japanese  Legation  in  Peking:  "There  are 
only  two  world  powers  now  which  can  give  attention  to 
China  in  any  appreciable  degree.  They  are  Japan  and  the 


EFFECT  OF  THE  WORLD  WAR  ON  JAPAN       427 

United  States.  .  .  .  But  Japan,  for  geographical  reasons 
and  because  of  her  political  and  other  relations  in  the  past, 
is  in  a  more  convenient  position  than  America  to  assist 
China.  The  responsibility  of  Japan,  therefore,  is  very  great. 
Japan  should  treat  China  as  if  she  were  Japan's  own  rela- 
tive. This  task  requires  a  great  deal  of  patience  or.  the 
part  of  Japan.  Japan  must  care  for  China  as  a  mother 
cares  for  her  child.  It  is  my  idea  that  we  should  be  patient 
with  China.  If  she  listens  to  our  friendly  suggestions,  she 
should  be  encouraged;  if  she  does  not,  she  should  be  chas- 
tised as  a  father  punishes  his  wayward  son.  I  expect  to 
assist  Baron  Hayashi,  my  chief,  in  Peking  with  that  policy 
in  mind."  l 

During  Viscount  Kikujiro  Ishii's  visit  in  America,  he  dis- 
claimed a  press  report  that  in  one  of  his  addresses  he  had 
announced  a  Japanese  Monroe  Doctrine  for  Asia.  He  de- 
clared that  "there  is  this  fundamental  difference  between 
the  Monroe  Doctrine  of  the  United  States  as  to  Central 
and  South  America  and  the  enunciation  of  Japan's  attitude 
toward  China.  In  the  first,  there  is  on  the  part  of  the 
United  States  no  engagement  or  promise,  while  in  the 
other  Japan  voluntarily  announces  that  Japan  will  herself 
engage  not  to  violate  the  political  or  territorial  integrity 
of  her  neighbor  and  to  observe  the  principle  of  the  open 
door  and  equal  opportunity,  asking  at  the  same  time  other 
nations  to  respect  these  principles.  Therefore,  gentlemen, 
you  will  mark  the  wide  difference  and  agree  with  me,  I  am 
sure,  that  the  use  of  the  term  is  somewhat  loose  and  mis- 
leading." 2 

I  am  glad  to  quote  Viscount  Ishii's  disclaimer.  How- 
ever, the  use  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  as  an  illustration  of 
Japan's  relations  to  China,  was  first  suggested  by  the  Japa- 
nese themselves,  and  it  has  been  repeatedly  pressed  by 
them.  Viscount  Ishii's  intimation  that  Japan  has  made 
more  liberal  promises  to  China  than  the  United  States  has 
made  to  South  America  may  be  verbally  correct,  but  we 

1  Quoted  in  The  Japan  Society  Bulletin,  New  York,  April  30,  1917. 
1  Address  in  New  York,  October  1,  1917. 


428  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

are  puzzled  to  understand  how  the  declaration  can  be 
squared  with  the  facts.  At  any  rate,  Americans  will  doubt- 
less say  at  once  that  if  Japan  means  for  China  only  what 
the  United  States  means  by  its  Monroe  Doctrine,  they  have 
no  objection  whatever,  but,  on  the  contrary,  hearty  sym- 
pathy. As  a  matter  of  fact,  our  country  does  not  interfere 
with  the  internal  affairs  of  any  other  nation  in  this  hemi- 
sphere. It  demands  no  concessions  from  them,  appoints  no 
advisers,  and  stations  no  soldiers  within  their  territories. 
Even  when  Mexico  was  convulsed  for  years  by  a  revolution 
which  ruined  valuable  American  property  and  destroyed 
many  American  lives,  the  Washington  government  declined 
to  intervene,  although  strongly  urged  to  do  so.  The  Ameri- 
can policy  is  that  each  nation  should  be  left  absolutely  free 
to  work  out  its  own  destiny.  The  United  States  simply  says 
to  other  Powers:  "Hands  off."  The  demands  which  Japan 
has  made  upon  China  go  much  farther  than  this.  It  is  im- 
possible to  read  them  and  conclude  that  Japan  contemplates 
nothing  more  in  China  than  the  United  States  contemplates 
in  the  Western  hemisphere. 

The  Cheng-chiatun  affair  in  1916  is  a  case  in  point. 
Fighting  occurred  between  Japanese  troops  and  the  Chi- 
nese, and  men  were  killed  on  both  sides.  Opinions  differ 
as  to  whether  the  Japanese  or  the  Chinese  were  to  blame. 
It  was  natural  that  the  government  of  Japan  should  ac- 
cept the  interpretation  of  its  own  officers,  especially  as 
Chinese  officials  are  notorious  for  "saving  face"  without 
regard  to  truthfulness.  But  an  outsider  naturally  inquires: 
Why  were  Japanese  troops  there  at  all?  Cheng-chiatun  is 
not  in  any  part  of  China  in  which  the  Chinese  have  recog- 
nized the  right  of  Japan  to  station  soldiers.  Clashes  are 
to  be  expected  in  such  circumstances.  One  can  imagine 
what  would  happen  to  a  foreign  armed  force  in  Japan. 
But  in  Cheng-chiatun  Japanese  troops  were  stationed,  and 
for  what  followed,  whether  it  was  attack  or  resistance  on 
the  part  of  the  Chinese,  China  was  forced  to  pay  ignomini- 
ous penalties.  The  first  demands  of  Japan  included  the 
rights  to  establish  Japanese  police  stations  "at  certain  fixed 


EFFECT  OF  THE  WORLD  WAR  ON  JAPAN       429 

localities  in  Manchuria  and  Inner  Mongolia,"  and,  "in  case 
of  necessity,  at  other  special  localities  in  the  above-men- 
tioned region."  "Japan  is  entitled  to  ask  permission  from 
China  to  establish  police  stations."  Another  point  was 
that  "besides  the  engagement  of  Lieutenant-General  Aoki 
as  military  adviser,  China  is  asked  to  engage  several  more 
military  advisers  from  Japan."  After  considerable  nego- 
tiation Japan  agreed  to  withdraw  these  clauses,  and  the 
final  agreement  was  as  follows: 

(1)  "  The  commander  of  the  Twenty-Eighth  Division  shall  be  repri- 
manded. (2)  Chinese  military  officers  responsible  for  the  trouble 
shall  be  duly  punished.  (3)  China  agrees  to  issue  orders  to  the  mili- 
tary and  civil  classes  in  districts  wherein  Japanese  subjects  enjoy  the 
privilege  of  residence,  stating  that  Japanese  subjects,  civil  and  mili- 
tary, shall  all  be  accorded  such  courtesy  as  is  due  them.  (4)  The 
military  governor  of  Mukden  will  send  a  delegate  to  express  his  re- 
grets to  the  Japanese  military  governor  of  Kwang-tung  and  the 
Japanese  consul-general  at  Mukden  at  a  time  when  both  of  them  are 
at  Port  Arthur.  The  form  of  expressing  such  regrets  will  be  deter- 
mined by  the  Chinese  governor  himself.  (5)  The  family  of  the 
Japanese  Yoshimoto  will  be  given  five  hundred  dollars  silver  as  in- 
demnity. On  the  execution  of  the  foregoing  provisions,  Japan  will 
withdraw  the  additionally  stationed  troops  from  Shipinchie  and 
Cheng-chiatun. " 

The  Chinese  Government  submitted  to  these  terms; 
and  so  this  particular  crisis,  which  at  first  appeared  omi- 
nous, was  safely  passed.  But  what  next  ?  Doctor  Jeremiah 
W.  Jenks  says  that  "information  from  authoritative  sources 
is  to  the  effect  that  at  the  very  time  that  Viscount  Ishii 
was  making  his  most  eloquent  addresses  in  this  country, 
Japanese  agents  in  Peking  were  crowding  Chinese  Govern- 
ment officials  by  every  device  known  to  those  skillful 
negotiators."1 

1  The  New  York  Times,  December  28,  1917. 


CHAPTER  XXVII 
DEEPENING  COMPLICATIONS  WITH  CHINA 

THE  Far  Eastern  situation  assumed  a  new  phase  in  March, 
1917,  when  China  severed  diplomatic  relations  with  Ger- 
many, handed  the  German  Minister  in  Peking  his  passports, 
and  ordered  the  seizure  of  German  ships  in  Chinese  harbors. 
This  was  followed  by  a  formal  declaration  of  war  August 
17.  The  ostensible  reason  was  the  submarine  policy  of 
Germany,  which  had  largely  broken  up  China's  trade  with 
Europe,  and  caused  the  death  of  several  hundred  Chinese 
who  were  on  torpedoed  ships.  Large  numbers  of  coolies 
were  being  sent  to  France  to  take  the  places  of  French 
laborers,  who  were  needed  in  the  trenches.  More  than 
100,000  were  in  France  by  the  first  of  March,  and  the  ships 
that  were  sunk  were  carrying  additional  men. 

No  one  who  knows  China  and  the  Chinese  will  take  these 
reasons  at  their  face  value.  China  had  submitted  in  the 
past  to  far  more  grievous  provocations  without  making 
war,  and  she  would  not  have  dreamed  of  war  in  1917  if 
Germany  had  not  been  shut  up  in  Europe  beyond  possibility 
of  getting  out.  The  spirit  of  republican  China  is  far  differ- 
ent from  that  of  the  Manchu  autocrats  of  the  old  regime, 
and  the  sympathy  of  the  new  leaders  would  naturally  be 
with  the  democratic  peoples  of  the  West.  But  the  govern- 
ment knew  quite  well  that  the  republic  had  too  many  in- 
ternal problems  on  its  hands,  and  was  too  utterly  helpless 
as  a  military  factor  to  undertake  war  against  a  first-class 
Power  like  Germany.  Besides,  the  sentiment  of  the  people 
of  northern  China  was  largely  pro-German.  This  was  not 
because  the  Chinese  were  antagonistic  to  England  and 
and  France,  but  because  they  feared  the  Japanese  and  in- 
stinctively sympathized  with  Germany  as  Japan's  enemy. 

Arthur  H.  Smith,  who  probably  knows  China  better  than 

430 


DEEPENING  COMPLICATIONS  WITH  CHINA      431 

any  other  living  man,  said:  "This  [the  declaration  of  war] 
is  largely  a  legal  fiction.  No  man  [soldier]  has  gone  nor 
will  go,  so  far  as  we  know;  no  money  has  been  spent  or  will 
be  spent,  so  far  as  we  can  see.  It  is  only  the  external  im- 
pression that  goes  abroad  that  China  is  hostile  to  Ger- 
many. It  is  very  uncertain  whether  China  is  really  hos- 
tile to  Germany.  The  Germans  have  adapted  themselves 
in  their  commerce  to  China  as  no  other  nations  have  ever 
done;  they  also  have  known  better  how  to  advertise  and 
to  make  themselves  and  their  productions  known.  Now 
that  China  has  declared  war  on  Germany,  most  official 
Germans,  from  the  Minister  down,  have  been  deported, 
but  private  citizens  remain  and  their  internment  is  only 
nominal." 

Why,  then,  did  the  government  break  with  Germany  and 
identify  itself  with  the  Allies?  Devious  are  the  ways  of 
diplomacy,  and  its  real  reasons  are  seldom  megaphoned 
from  housetops.  It  may  be  some  time  yet  before  the  world 
will  know  the  actual  motives  in  this  case;  but  certain  con- 
siderations lie  upon  the  surface,  and  while  we  cannot  now 
appraise  their  exact  relative  influence,  we  shall  not  be 
going  far  afield  in  mentioning  them. 

For  one  thing,  China  had  a  strong  financial  reason  for 
breaking  with  Germany.  The  government  was  in  desperate 
financial  straits,  and  it  owed  Germany  a  large  sum  on  which 
the  interest  charges  were  $20,000,000  a  year.  China  rightly 
regarded  this  debt  as  an  unjust  one  since  it  was  the  indem- 
nity imposed  after  the  Boxer  Uprising,  an  indemnity  which 
on  the  part  of  all  the  European  Powers  concerned,  includ- 
ing Germany,  was  deliberately  intended  not  merely  to  be 
a  reimbursement  for  actual  losses  but  a  severe  punishment. 
The  United  States  refused  to  accept  more  than  the  amount 
of  its  actual  loss,  and  afterward  refunded  even  that;  but 
the  European  governments  demanded  their  full  pound  of 
flesh.  Germany's  share  was  90,070,515  taels,  and  Austria- 
Hungary's  was  4,003,920  taels  more,  which,  like  the  shares 
of  other  nations,  was  to  be  paid  in  thirty-nine  annual  in- 
stalments, with  interest  at  4  per  cent  on  deferred  pay- 


432  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

ments.  Many  of  the  payments  had  been  deferred  since 
the  protocol  was  signed  in  1901,  and  interest  had  piled  up 
until  the  burden  had  become  ponderous.  The  declaration 
of  war  was  held  to  cancel  this  obligation  as  well  as  all 
treaties,  and  it  thus  afforded  substantial  relief  to  a  govern- 
ment which  was  in  sore  need  of  money.  China  also  owed 
the  Allies  large  sums  for  their  indemnities.  The  portion 
assigned  to  France  was  70,878,240  taels,  to  Great  Britain 
50,712,795,  to  Italy  26,617,005,  and  to  Russia  130,371,120. 
The  annual  interest  on  the  remaining  part  of  the  principal 
and  on  deferred  payments  amounted  to  a  huge  sum.  Would 
the  Allies  remit  a  part  or  the  whole  of  these  obligations  if 
China  would  join  them  against  Germany?  The  answer 
appeared  in  September,  1917,  when  the  ministers  of  the 
Entente  Powers  at  Peking  informed  the  Foreign  Office  of 
the  Chinese  Government  that  their  governments  would 
postpone  further  payments  of  the  indemnities  for  a  period 
of  five  years,  a  concession  which,  it  was  estimated,  would 
give  China  the  use  of  about  $200,000,000.  Whether  the 
payments  will  ever  be  resumed  remains  to  be  seen. 

Moreover,  under  the  treaties  which  Western  governments 
imposed  upon  China  at  the  close  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
import  duties  are  limited  to  5  per  cent  ad  valorem  based 
on  the  average  prices  of  goods  in  the  years  1897-1899. 
This  is  a  heavy  handicap,  especially  as  the  great  increase 
in  prices,  and  the  change  from  an  ad  valorem  duty  to 
specific  duties  for  purposes  of  collection,  reduced  the  actual 
tariff  on  the  basis  of  present  values  to  a  considerably  lower 
rate.  Meantime,  Chinese  goods  entering  Western  coun- 
tries were  taxed  from  33  to  100  per  cent.  This  was  an  in- 
justice which  no  foreign  government  would  have  tolerated. 
China  had  long  been  petitioning  Western  governments  to 
consent  to  a  change  in  the  tariff.  The  United  States  had 
complied,  but  several  of  the  European  governments  had 
refused  to  do  so.  Professor  Jeremiah  W.  Jenks  well  says 
that  "the  foreign-controlled  Chinese  tariff  cripples  Chinese 
industry  because  it  discriminates  against  Chinese  industry 
and  in  favor  of  foreign  products  at  all  points.  It  weakens 


DEEPENING  COMPLICATIONS  WITH  CHINA      433 

the  Chinese  central  and  provincial  governments  because  it 
encourages  contempt  for  native  authority,  while  depriving 
these  authorities  of  the  money-means  of  securing  efficiency 
and  respect."  China  therefore  urgently  desired  relief,  and 
everybody  believed  that  the  Allies  were  disposed  to  give  it 
if  China  would  range  herself  on  their  side  in  the  war. 

China,  too,  wished  to  secure  foreign  loans,  and  her  credit 
was  bad.  She  could  not  obtain  money  from  Great  Britain 
or  France  unless  she  could  supplement  her  security  by  other 
considerations  that  the  British  and  the  French  deemed 
valuable.  Help  in  the  war  was  a  consideration  of  this 
kind. 

China  had  another  reason  of  still  greater  moment.  Her 
leaders  knew  quite  well  that  when  the  representatives  of  all 
the  belligerent  nations  should  meet  around  a  council-table 
to  consider  terms  of  peace,  there  would  probably  be  a  re- 
distribution of  large  parts  of  Asia,  Africa,  and  the  Pacific 
Islands,  in  all  of  which  the  belligerent  nations  on  both 
sides  had  great  colonial  territories.  Among  these  valuable 
possessions  were  the  priceless  concessions  which  Germany 
had  held  in  the  province  of  Shantung,  and  which  the  Japa- 
nese took  over  when  they  drove  the  Germans  out  of  Tsing- 
tau.  China  feared  that  the  Japanese  intended  to  keep 
them;  and  many  observers  believed  that  there  was  ground 
for  the  fear.  As  the  disposition  of  all  the  German  colonies 
would  come  before  the  peace  conference  the  Chinese  Gov- 
ernment naturally  desired  representation  in  order  that  it 
might  have  a  voice  in  deciding  what  was  to  be  done  with 
Tsing-tau  and  its  hinterland.  Indeed  the  whole  question 
of  foreign  aggressions  upon  China  might  come  up.  The 
Premier,  Tuan  Chi-jui,  told  the  Parliament  that  not  only 
these  questions  but  questions  of  the  tariff,  extraterritorial 
laws,  and  revision  of  treaties  would  probably  be  considered 
and  settled  at  the  peace  conference,  and  that  in  the  final 
adjustments  and  compromises,  China  would  almost  cer- 
tainly be  involved.  The  Chinese  did  not  like  the  idea  of 
having  such  matters  decided  without  them,  and  they  were 
well  aware  that  their  only  chance  to  be  heard,  was  to  iden- 


434  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

tify  themselves  with  the  Allies.  The  event  proved  the 
correctness  of  their  belief,  for  their  status  as  a  belligerent 
secured  them  two  representatives  at  the  Peace  Conference. 

It  had  been  known  for  some  time  that  the  European 
Allies  were  urging  China  to  join  them,  and  it  is  easy  to  see 
why  they  were  anxious  to  have  her  do  so.  Every  co- 
operating nation,  however  small,  meant  additional  moral 
support.  But  China  is  not  small.  It  is  true  that  it  is  not 
formidable  as  a  military  power,  but  it  was  not  a  light  thing 
for  the  Allies  to  be  able  to  feel  that,  if  they  had  China's 
co-operation,  they  would  have  nearly  the  whole  of  Asia, 
since  they  already  had,  either  voluntarily  or  involuntarily, 
India,  Persia,  Japan,  and  Korea,  with  Siam  well  under  way. 
China  could  bring  some  material  advantages  that  were  not 
to  be  despised.  She  had  an  army  of  458,600  men.  This 
was  a  comparatively  small  force,  and  not  an  effective  one 
from  a  modern  view-point.  But  there  was  an  unlimited 
number  of  men  to  enlarge  it;  and  if  the  war  should  be  pro- 
longed, they  could  be  drilled  into  efficiency,  for  the  Chinese 
make  good  soldiers  when  properly  organized  and  led. 

Laboring  men  were  quite  as  important  to  the  Allies  as 
soldiers.  So  many  of  their  own  workmen  were  needed  in 
the  fighting  ranks  that  they  were  having  great  difficulty  in 
maintaining  their  farms  and  factories  and  other  industrial 
operations.  In  a  war  in  which  food  and  munitions  played 
so  large  a  part,  and  in  which  enemy  submarines  jeopardized 
supplies  from  other  lands,  it  was  an  enormous  advantage 
to  have  such  a  boundless  reservoir  of  men  as  China  to  draw 
upon. 

Nor  was  China  without  means  of  giving  some  assistance 
in  munitions.  She  then  had  several  arsenals — the  Hanyang 
arsenal,  the  Hupeh  Steel  and  Power  Factory,  the  Teh-chou 
arsenal,  the  Shanghai  arsenal,  and  the  Nanking  arsenal, 
and  two  more  were  planned  for  in  the  provinces  of  Chih-li 
and  Kwang-tung,  respectively.  Some  of  these  arsenals 
were  large,  and  all  could  be  easily  made  larger.  Raw  ma- 
terials, too,  China  possesses  in  unlimited  abundance,  the 
very  ones  that  the  European  armies  most  needed. 


DEEPENING  COMPLICATIONS  WITH  CHINA      435 

The  British  had  an  urgent  additional  reason  for  seeking 
the  co-operation  of  China  in  their  conviction,  for  which 
there  were  abundant  grounds,  that  the  German  legation 
in  Peking,  the  German  consulates  in  a  number  of  impor- 
tant cities,  and  the  3,740  Germans  scattered  throughout 
China  were  conducting  a  propaganda  against  the  Allies, 
obstructing  their  plans,  and  making  China  a  base  for  plot- 
ting against  India  in  a  way  which  was  causing  no  small 
anxiety  to  the  authorities  in  that  country,  where  condi- 
tions were  not  as  satisfactory  as  a  censored  press  sought 
to  make  the  world  believe.  No  one  who  was  familiar  with 
German  methods  deemed  this  a  light  thing,  and  the  most 
effective  way  for  Great  Britain  to  stop  this  dangerous  ac- 
tivity was  to  induce  China  to  break  with  Germany,  and  to 
intern  German  subjects  within  her  bounds. 

As  soon  as  it  became  evident  that  the  Allies  were  trying 
to  persuade  China  to  join  them  against  Germany,  and  that 
the  Chinese  Government  was  disposed  to  do  so,  Japan 
protested.  Without  professing  to  know  why  the  Japanese 
did  this,  we  may,  as  in  the  case  of  China,  note  some  reasons 
that  lie  upon  the  surface.  The  objects  that  China  hoped 
to  secure  by  breaking  with  Germany  were  the  very  ones 
that  it  was  not  to  the  interest  of  Japan  that  China  should 
obtain.  Japan  preferred  to  deal  with  China  herself,  un- 
embarrassed by  complications  with  European  governments. 
Japan  did  not  care  to  have  China's  financial  position 
strengthened  by  European  loans,  secured  by  valuable  con- 
siderations of  a  kind  that  the  United  States  would  object 
to  if  a  South  American  republic  were  to  give  them  to  a 
European  nation.  Nor  did  Japan  care  to  have  China  given 
a  voice  around  the  council-table  of  nations  where  the  dis- 
position of  the  province  of  Shantung  and  perhaps  Man- 
churia might  be  considered.  Japan's  opposition  was  so 
definite  and  so  potent  that  the  plan  to  have  China  break 
with  Germany  was  checked. 

In  March,  1917,  Japan  suddenly  withdrew  objection. 
How  are  we  to  account  for  such  a  reversal  of  attitude? 
Again  I  must  remark  that  the  ways  of  diplomacy  are  devious 


436  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

and  seldom  megaphoned  from  housetops,  and  that  he  is 
unsophisticated  indeed  in  international  affairs  who  imagines 
that  Japan  changed  her  mind  without  valuable  considera- 
tions. The  European  Allies  undoubtedly  gave  Japan  as- 
surances that  the  Japanese  thought  were  worth  while, 
among  them  perhaps  the  promise  that  Japan  would  not 
be  seriously  interfered  with  in  carrying  out  her  programme 
in  China.  This  suspicion  was  strengthened  when  the 
Russian  Revolutionary  Government  published  some  of  the 
documents  that  it  found  in  the  Foreign  Office  at  Petrograd. 
Among  the  revelations  was  evidence  that  the  Allied  Minis- 
ters in  Peking  had  urged  the  Chinese  Government  to  go 
into  the  war,  and  had  presented  as  an  inducement  the  con- 
sideration that  China  would  then  have  a  seat  at  the  peace 
conference,  and  thus  have  a  chance  to  get  back  Tsing-tau. 
At  the  same  time,  the  Russian  Minister  in  Tokyo  was 
urging  the  Japanese  Government  to  withdraw  its  objec- 
tion to  China's  going  to  the  war,  and  saying  that,  if  it  would 
do  so,  the  Allies  would  support  Japan's  claim  to  keep 
Tsing-tau.1 

Verily,  dubious  are  the  ways  of  secret  diplomacy.  Certain 
it  is  that  Japan,  which  had  at  first  vetoed  the  break  with 
Germany,  afterward  advised  it.  Doctor  Frank  J.  Good- 
now,  President  of  Johns  Hopkins  University  and  formerly 
confidential  Foreign  Adviser  of  the  Chinese  Government, 
said  at  the  time:  "China  would  never  have  broken  off  re- 
lations but  for  the  urgings  of  Japan,  which  has  sinister  de- 
signs against  the  integrity  of  China.  And  unfortunately  she 
will  be  able  to  carry  out  her  scheme.  One  obvious  motive 
is  the  opportunity  it  will  afford  Japan  to  gain  control  of 
China's  army  and  navy,  a  step  that  will  put  her  abso- 
lutely at  the  Mikado's  mercy."  2 

Time  alone  will  show  whether  China  embroiled  herself 
in  the  world  war  to  her  benefit  or  to  her  hurt.  We  suspect 

1  Despatch  from  M.  Krupensky,  former  Russian  Ambassador  at  Tokyo, 
to  the  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs  in  Petrograd,  February  8,  1917,  cited  in 
The  Secret  Treaties  and  Understandings,  published  by  the  Russian  Revolu- 
tionary Government. 

1  Press  interview,  March  14,  1917. 


DEEPENING  COMPLICATIONS   WITH  CHINA      437 

that,  in  spite  of  the  virtuous  and  well-meant  declarations 
of  the  various  Powers  regarding  "the  rights  of  weaker 
nations,"  poor,  helpless  China  will  get  only  what  the  re- 
presentatives of  stronger  governments  deem  expedient,  and 
that  Japan  will  have  a  good  deal  to  say  as  to  what  that 
shall  be. 

Meantime,  the  number  of  Japanese  in  China  is  rapidly 
increasing.  Not  only  is  Tsing-tau  wholly  under  Japanese 
control,  but  such  cities  as  Peking,  Tien-tsin,  Shanghai,  and 
others  far  in  the  interior  have  Japanese  quarters.  Tsinan-fu, 
which  had  only  1,400  Japanese  in  March,  1916,  had  22,000 
a  year  later.  Hankow,  six  hundred  miles  up  the  Yang-tze 
River,  also  has  a  numerous  Japanese  colony.  Indeed  almost 
all  the  important  centres  in  the  country  have  groups  of 
Japanese,  ranging  from  a  few  individuals  to  populous  set- 
tlements. These  Japanese  are  seldom  of  the  coolie  class; 
they  are  as  a  rule  enterprising  and  capable  men  of  a  higher 
type,  able  to  represent  their  country's  interests  to  advan- 
tage, and  on  the  alert  to  do  so. 

Premier  Terauchi  and  his  Foreign  Minister  publicly  de- 
clared early  in  1917  that  their  policy  in  China  was  to  be 
one  of  "non-interference"  with  Chinese  affairs.  But  Chi- 
nese officials  find  able  and  courteous  Japanese  "advisers" 
at  their  elbows,  and  foreign  diplomats  and  consuls  discover 
that  in  various  and  more  or  less  mysterious  ways  Japanese 
influence  makes  itself  felt.  Documents  in  my  possession 
from  men  of  undoubted  reliability  give  a  rather  startling 
account  of  the  imperious  methods  of  the  Japanese  in  a  part 
of  China  in  which  they  are  particularly  numerous,  and  of 
the  resultant  uneasiness  and  even  actual  terror  of  the  Chi- 
nese population.  However  reassuring  the  public  language 
of  diplomacy  may  be,  any  one  who  acts  on  the  assumption 
that  the  Japanese  do  not  possess  an  ascendancy  in  Chinese 
matters  which  they  intend  to  maintain  is  likely  to  have  a 
rude  awakening. 

One  can  understand  the  resentment  of  the  Chinese 
against  the  constant  interference  of  other  nations  in  their 
internal  affairs,  and  their  quite  natural  demand  to  be  let 


438  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

alone.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  painfully  evident  that 
China  will  not  be  let  alone.  She  has  no  adequate  leader- 
ship, and  she  is  too  big  a  hulk  to  be  allowed  to  drift  help- 
lessly about  the  world's  thoroughfares  for  a  generation  or 
more  before  she  can  right  herself  and  cease  to  be  a  tempta- 
tion to  any  predatory  Power  that  may  covet  her.  More- 
over, several  nations  besides  Japan  are  already  there,  and 
show  no  disposition  to  leave.  With  Russia  in  Manchuria, 
Great  Britain  in  Hong  Kong,  and  France  in  Saigon,  I  can 
understand  the  feeling  of  the  Japanese  that  their  interests 
may  be  fairly  considered  paramount  to  those  of  European 
nations,  and  that  since  there  is  bound  to  be  interference 
with  China  anyway,  Japan  has  a  better  right  than  any  of 
her  competitors. 

Japan's  interests  in  China  are  more  vital  than  America's 
interests  in  South  America.  The  United  States  could  get 
along  without  that  continent  far  better  than  Japan  could  get 
along  without  China.  While  we  desire  South  American 
trade  and  raw  materials,  we  are  not  dependent  upon  them. 
But  Japan  is  dependent,  in  part  at  least,  upon  the  Chinese 
market  and  Chinese  products.  I  have  referred  in  another 
chapter  to  her  large  trade  relations  with  China,  and  many 
other  instances  might  be  cited.  For  example,  as  a  great 
manufacturing  and  steel-producing  country,  Japan  must 
have  ample  supplies  of  iron  ore.  She  has  practically  none 
of  her  own  and  must  import  her  supply.  The  nearest  place 
where  it  can  be  found  in  sufficient  quantity  is  in  China, 
which  has  vast  deposits.  Japan  also  needs  China's  coal. 
She  has  some  of  her  own,  but  not  nearly  enough.  A  great 
manufacturing  nation  in  this  industrial  era  must  have  un- 
limited supplies  of  iron  and  coal.  China  has  both.  Hence 
Japan  wants  prior  rights  in  China. 

An  interesting  illustration  of  Japan's  attitude  occurred 
after  the  American  Minister  in  Peking,  the  Honorable  Paul 
S.  Reinsch,  presented  to  the  government  of  China,  June  7, 
1917,  a  note  to  the  effect  that  the  government  of  the  United 
States  viewed  with  deep  and  friendly  concern  the  disturbed 
situation  in  China;  that  China's  entrance  into  the  world 


DEEPENING  COMPLICATIONS  WITH  CHINA      439 

war  or  the  continuance  of  the  status  quo  in  her  relation 
with  Germany  was  of  "secondary  importance";  that  her 
"principal  necessity"  was  to  "resume  and  continue  her 
political  entity  and  proceed  along  the  road  to  national  de- 
velopment"; that  it  was  the  hope  of  America  that  "fac- 
tional and  political  disputes"  would  be  "set  aside,"  and 
that  "all  parties  and  persons  would  work  to  re-establish 
and  co-orctinate  the  government  and  secure  China's  posi- 
tion among  the  nations,  which  is  impossible  while  there  is 
internal  discord";  and  that  the  United  States  was  a  friend 
who  desired  to  be  "of  service  to  China."  Japan  resented 
this  advice  to  China  without  prior  consultation  with  the 
Tokyo  government.  The  publication  of  a  garbled  revision 
of  the  American  note  made  matters  worse.  The  correct 
copy,  published  June  13,  somewhat  modified  the  anger  of 
the  Japanese,  but  failed  to  dispel  it.  The  comments  of  the 
Japanese  press  were  vitriolic,  and  the  Tokyo  government 
courteously  but  firmly  intimated  its  surprise  and  regret. 
"Woe  betide  China,"  exclaimed  Mr.  Kyoshi  Kawakami, 
"if  she  thinks  that  America  can  be  relied  upon  to  save  her 
when  the  day  really  comes  that  China  must  be  saved." 
"Let  me  say  to  you  quite  frankly,"  remarked  Doctor  Toyo- 
kishi  lyenaga  in  an  article  in  the  New  York  Evening  Post, 
"that  Japan  will  resent  an  attempt  at  extending  the  politi- 
cal influence  of  the  United  States  in  China;  but  it  must  be 
clearly  understood  that  this  does  not  involve  any  curtail- 
ment of  the  privileges  of  commercial  and  industrial  ex- 
pansion which  the  United  States  may  seek  in  China.  Our 
political  interests  in  China  are  greater  than  yours.  China 
is  closer  to  us.  But  there  is  no  disposition  on  the  part  of 
Japan  to  close  the  open  door  or  to  create  inequalities  in  the 
terms  on  which  the  United  States  may  engage  in  Far  East- 
ern trade." 

That  America  was  not  discriminated  against  as  compared 
with  Great  Britain  appeared  in  the  spring  of  1918,  when 
the  Japanese  Minister  hi  Peking  protested  to  the  Chinese 
Government  against  giving  a  British  syndicate  a  conces- 
sion to  construct  a  railway  from  Posiet  Bay,  near  Vladivos- 


440  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

tok,  by  way  of  Hun-chun  on  the  Korean  border  to  Kirin, 
the  terminus  of  the  Japanese  branch  line.  It  is  clear  that 
Japan's  claim  to  pre-eminence  in  the  Far  East  is  not  an 
empty  expression,  and  that  other  nations  are  expected  to 
take  due  notice  and  govern  themselves  accordingly. 

There  is  a  vital  aspect  of  the  international  question  in- 
volved that  should  not  be  overlooked.  We  are  hearing 
much  in  these  days  of  the  right  of  each  nation  to  manage 
its  own  affairs  and  to  determine  for  itself  whether  it  shall 
be  independent  or  under  the  tutelage  of  some  stronger 
Power.  The  speakers  and  writers  who  dress  up  this  prin- 
ciple in  such  attractive  language  for  public  consumption 
apparently  do  not  realize,  or  if  they  do,  they  deem  it  inex- 
pedient to  indicate,  the  limitations  that  are  imposed  by 
inexorable  necessity.  A  nation,  like  an  individual,  has  a 
right  to  do  as  it  pleases  as  long  as  it  pleases  to  do  right. 
But  suppose  it  pleases  to  do  wrong?  Or  suppose,  with 
good  intentions,  it  is  too  ignorant  or  undisciplined  to  use 
freedom  in  proper  ways?  "Ay,  there's  the  rub!"  Must 
we  not  qualify  acceptance  of  the  principle  by  saying  that 
when  the  consequences  of  a  nation's  ill-doing  affect  only  its 
own  people,  other  nations  should  not  interfere  but  leave  it 
to  work  out  its  own  salvation,  and  to  learn  by  painful  ex- 
perience that  the  way  of  the  transgressor  is  hard;  but  that 
if  the  consequences  of  a  nation's  ill-doing  impinge  upon 
other  nations,  they  are  justified  in  interfering  to  the  extent 
that  their  rights  are  impaired  ?  Otherwise,  the  very  essence 
of  the  principle  of  national  rights  is  vitiated  since  other 
nations  are  denied  their  rights. 

This  is  precisely  the  situation  that  confronts  the  world 
to-day.  During  the  great  war  we  said  in  the  same  breath 
that  a  nation  has  a  right  to  determine  its  own  form  of 
government  and  to  manage  its  own  affairs,  but  that  when 
a  powerful  nation  like  Germany  comes  into  world  relation- 
ships armed  to  the  teeth,  and  under  the  leadership  of  a 
monarch  who  asserts  that  he  derives  his  power  directly 
from  God,  and  is  responsible  only  to  God  and  not  to  his 
fellow  men  for  the  use  that  he  makes  of  it,  no  other  nation 


DEEPENING  COMPLICATIONS  WITH  CHINA      441 

on  the  planet  is  safe  until  that  government  is  deprived  of 
its  power  to  do  evil. 

The  principle  of  self-determination  must  also  be  quali- 
fied in  the  case  of  peoples  who  are  so  unfitted  for  the  exer- 
cise of  freedom  that  their  internal  affairs  become  a  source 
of  international  trouble.  Turkey,  Mexico,  and  the  Balkan 
States  belong  in  this  class.  Was  it  the  duty  of  other  na- 
tions to  acquiesce  in  Turkey's  treatment  of  the  Armenians, 
in  the  endless  succession  of  bloody  revolutions  in  Mexico, 
and  in  the  liberty  of  unscrupulous  adventurers  to  make  the 
Balkan  States  a  Pandora's  box  of  world  evils?  Clearly, 
the  orderly  and  capable  nations  of  the  world  must  adopt 
some  method  of  dealing  with  the  disorderly  and  incapable 
ones,  and  with  the  same  justification  that  every  state  pos- 
sesses in  dealing  with  its  immature,  defective,  and  criminal 
classes.  The  individual  man  has  the  inalienable  right  to 
life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness;  but  the  most 
democratic  government  on  earth  will  promptly  punish  him 
if  he  breaks  the  laws  which  are  essential  to  the  preserva- 
tion of  the  rights  of  the  community. 

If  it  be  objected  that  Americans  did  not  recognize  the 
right  of  self-determination  in  their  acquisition  of  Florida, 
Louisiana,  California,  Alaska,  Porto  Rico,  and  the  Phil- 
ippines, and  that  Great  Britain  did  not  recognize  it  in 
establishing  her  rule  over  several  hundred  millions  of  other 
peoples,  I  reply  that  in  every  one  of  these  cases  the  new 
government  has  been  far  better  for  the  people  themselves 
than  the  government  which  it  superseded;  that  no  one  of 
these  territories  is  held  by  America  or  Great  Britain  against 
the  will  of  its  inhabitatnts,  except  where  they  are  plainly 
unfitted  to  exercise  the  functions  of  self-government;  and 
that  even  in  these  cases,  the  ruling  Power  has  declared  its 
readiness  to  offer  self-government  as  soon  as  the  people 
concerned  can  establish  and  maintain  it.  The  Cubans 
already  have  it.  The  Filipinos  are  getting  it  as  rapidly  as 
they  can  use  it.  Great  Britain's  colonies  highly  prize  their 
inclusion  in  the  Empire  and  would  never  dream  of  separating 
themselves  from  it.  In  Ireland,  for  which  Great  Britain 


442  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

has  been  so  sharply  assailed,  the  real  trouble  does  not  lie 
in  the  attitude  of  the  British  Government  but  in  the  divi- 
sions among  the  Irish  themselves,  no  one  faction  being  able 
to  set  up  a  government  which  the  other  faction  will  accept. 
The  British  Government  has,  in  effect,  told  the  people  of 
Ireland  that  it  will  approve  any  practicable  plan  which 
they  themselves  will  agree  upon.  Until  they  do  that,  the 
attempt  to  give  self-government  to  Ireland  would  simply 
result  in  civil  war. 

As  for  the  subject  peoples  of  Great  Britain  and  the  United 
States,  Sir  Michael  F.  O'Dwyer,  Lieutenant-Governor  of 
the  Punjab,  after  speaking  of  the  evils  from  which  the  peo- 
ple of  India  chiefly  suffer — ignorance,  disease,  crime,  abuse 
of  office,  corruption  by  those  in  authority,  excessive  litiga- 
tion, and  the  law's  delay,  said:  "Some  people  tell  us  that 
the  panacea  for  these  and  all  other  evils  is  self-government. 
I  readily  admit  that  self-government  within  the  Empire,  in 
a  form  suitable  to  the  traditions  and  aptitudes  of  the  various 
component  parts,  is  a  legitimate  ideal.  But  the  ideal  can 
only  be  realized  when  the  three  indispensable  conditions, 
laid  down  by  so  great  a  champion  of  popular  rights  as  Mill, 
are  fulfilled.  Those  are:  (1)  That  the  great  majority  of 
the  people  shall  desire  it;  (2)  that  they  shall  be  capable  of 
exercising  it;  (3)  that  they  shall  be  able  and  willing  to  un- 
dertake the  responsibilities,  among  them  external  and  in- 
ternal defence,  which  it  entails.  Speaking  of  my  own 
Province,  while  I  would  welcome  speedy  progress,  I  may 
say  that  those  conditions  are  not  likely  to  be  fulfilled  for 
many  a  long  day.  Meantime,  while  the  people  with  the 
aid  of  government  are  fitting  themselves  for  self-govern- 
ment, the  meaning  and  responsibilities  of  which  at  present 
but  few  understand,  it  is  our  duty  to  do  what  we  can  to 
insure  to  them  good  government  which  all  desire  and  which 
all  have  a  right  to  expect."1 

There  is  room  for  wide  difference  of  opinion,  and  even  for 
oppression  and  injustice,  when  any  given  nation  claims  the 
right  to  decide  for  itself  when  its  interference  with  some 

1  Address,  September  13,  1917. 


DEEPENING  COMPLICATIONS  WITH  CHINA      443 

other  nation  is  justified.  Even  the  best  of  governments  is 
not  free  from  the  more  or  less  subconscious  influence  of 
national  self-interest,  and  the  wisest  of  statesmen  are  falli- 
ble men.  The  remedy  here  is  for  an  international  court  and 
a  league  of  nations  to  sustain  it,  so  that  when  a  nation 
transgresses  the  rights  of  another  nation,  or  manages  its 
own  affairs  in  such  a  way  as  to  menace  the  peace  of  the 
world,  appeal  can  be  taken  to  an  impartial  and  broadly  repre- 
sentative body  which  can  decide  what  measures  are  required. 
The  controversy  between  China  and  Japan  illustrates 
the  desirability  of  having  some  such  method  of  international 
procedure.  China  is  not  small  and  ought  not  to  be  weak; 
but  the  huge  masses  of  her  people  are  not  yet  sufficiently 
coherent  and  efficient  in  national  administration  to  enable 
them  to  conduct  their  government  effectively,  or  to  protect 
themselves  against  the  aggressions  of  stronger  nations  which 
have  selfish  motives  for  exploiting  the  country.  The  revo- 
lution of  1911-12  was  carried  through  with  remarkable 
speed  and  effectiveness,  but  governmental  chaos  followed. 
There  were  five  presidents  within  six  years.  Parliaments 
spent  their  time  in  bickerings,  and  were  short-lived.  A 
provisional  constitution  was  formed,  but  a  permanent  one 
was  not  completed.  The  cleavage  between  the  North  and 
the  South  found  expression  in  parties  which  warred  for 
supremacy.  The  northern  party  was  in  possession  of  the 
Peking  government,  and  when  President  Li  arbitrarily 
dissolved  Parliament,  June  12,  1917,  a  majority  of  that 
body  refused  to  obey  the  order,  went  to  Canton,  and  there 
resumed  the  sessions.  Two  governments  resulted,  one  in 
Peking  and  the  other  in  Canton.  The  former  claims  legality 
and,  as  the  de  facto  successor  of  former  governments,  is 
recognized  by  other  nations  as  the  government  of  China  in 
international  matters.  The  latter  claims  to  represent  the 
true  republican  and  independent  spirit  of  the  Chinese  peo- 
ple, and  asks  recognition  on  that  basis.  Peking  assails 
Canton  as  a  rebellion,  and  Canton  assails  Peking  as  a 
militarism  dominated  by  Japan.  "Japan  is  virtually  ruling 
China  through  the  military  party  in  Peking,"  charges  the 


444  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

editor  of  the  Peking  Gazette  (now  removed  to  Shanghai). 
"Japan  is  our  enemy,"  adds  a  prominent  member  of  the 
Canton  government.  The  strife  between  the  two  sections 
has  waxed  bitter,  and  there  has  been  considerable  bloodshed. 

Meantime,  other  pressing  needs  are  being  neglected. 
An  American  who  has  spent  many  years  in  China  writes: 
"The  period  on  the  whole  is  discouraging  from  the  point 
of  view  of  China  as  a  nation.  I  believe  in  the  Chinese 
people;  they  have  great  latent  potentialities.  Chinese 
brains,  ability  and  capacity  for  great  and  deep  thought  are 
the  equal  of  any.  But  the  official  class  is  the  curse  of  China 
and  her  greatest  obstacle  to  progress.  All  the  advancement 
that  China  has  made  the  past  two  decades  has  been  made 
in  spite  of  the  drawbacks  due  to  the  ruling  class.  The 
land  shows  the  effects  of  ages  of  wilful  neglect.  The  hills 
are  denuded,  and  rainfall  and  wind  work  havoc,  whereas 
in  normal  conditions  they  should  facilitate  productivity. 
There  are  no  roads,  and  transportation  is  largely  restricted 
to  neighboring  villages  and  cities.  Markets  are  poor  and 
famines  prevail.  In  short,  China,  by  years  of  sheer  neglect, 
has  made  itself  a  country  to  be  exploited.  In  this  age  of 
the  world's  development,  such  a  large  part  of  the  earth's 
surface  cannot  be  left  to  lie  idle  or  go  to  waste.  China 
doesn't  begin  to  realize  it.  We  may  be  sorry  for  China  for 
losing  her  national  sovereignty,  but  the  seeds  of  death  that 
have  been  sown  by  the  officials  in  the  past  must  bear 
their  fruit  in  due  season." 

The  resultant  problem  is  international.  The  era  of  isola- 
tion has  passed  forever.  The  nations  of  the  world  have 
come  into  such  close  relations  that  it  is  no  longer  possible 
for  one-quarter  of  the  human  race  to  be  in  a  disorganized 
condition,  the  prey  to  every  governmental  buccaneer  on  the 
high  seas  of  the  world,  without  creating  conditions  which 
other  nations  are  obliged  to  take  into  account.  I  am 
among  those  who  have  immense  confidence  in  the  ability 
of  the  individual  Chinese  to  take  care  of  himself  in  all  cir- 
cumstances, and  to  do  so  in  a  peaceable  way  and  with  due 
regard  to  the  rights  of  other  individuals.  I  also  have  large 


DEEPENING  COMPLICATIONS  WITH  CHINA      445 

confidence  in  the  ultimate  ability  of  China  as  a  whole  to 
become  a  well-governed  modern  country,  both  able  and 
willing  to  take  a  high  place  among  the  great  nations  of  the 
earth.  Critics  in  Western  lands,  who  pessimistically  shake 
their  heads  about  the  confusion  in  China  as  an  evidence 
of  the  incapacity  of  the  Chinese  to  manage  their  own  affairs, 
might  discreetly  remember  that  even  the  wise  and  capable 
men  of  the  American  colonies  did  not  succeed  in  establish- 
ing a  constitution  until  thirteen  years  after  their  declara- 
tion of  independence,  and  that  it  is  not  yet  thirteen  years 
since  the  Chinese  overthrew  the  Manchu  Dynasty  and  be- 
gan to  lay  the  foundations  of  a  republic.  China  is  an 
enormous  and  backward  country,  which  cannot  begin  a 
new  era  in  a  new  region  as  the  American  colonists  did,  but 
must  laboriously  and  against  unprecedented  obstacles 
change  from  antiquated  to  modern  methods  where  she  is, 
and  with  no  Washington  to  guide  her.  She  is  like  a  ship 
without  a  captain  or  pilot,  helplessly  drifting  on  the  high 
seas,  apparently  unable  to  right  herself,  and,  in  her  present 
water-logged  condition,  a  menace  to  other  ships. 

In  these  circumstances,  the  Japanese  quite  naturally  say 
that,  as  China's  next-door  neighbor,  they  are  more  vitally 
concerned  than  any  other  people,  and  that  as  long  as  there 
is  no  world  court  or  league  of  nations  to  give  the  required 
assistance  under  international  auspices,  they  must  do  it 
themselves.  I  sympathize,  therefore,  with  the  feeling  of 
the  Japanese  that  they  cannot  ignore  this  incontestable 
situation. 

And  yet,  I  sympathize  also  with  the  Chinese,  who  resent 
dictation  from  a  single  Power  whose  methods  wound  their 
national  pride,  and  whose  motives  are  believed  to  be  in- 
fluenced by  self-interest.  I  have  often  said,  and  I  expect 
to  continue  to  say,  that  the  Chinese  could  work  out  their 
own  problem  if  other  nations  would  give  them  a  reasona- 
ble chance  to  do  so,  but  that  with  several  other  governments 
constantly  interfering  and  bullying  for  selfish  ends,  China 
is  seriously  handicapped  and  Japan  afforded  an  excuse  for 
claiming  priority  of  interest.  Ardently  do  I  hope  that  a 


446  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

world  court  and  a  league  of  nations  will  be  so  constituted 
that  conditions  of  this  kind  can  be  wisely  handled  with  due 
regard  both  to  the  rights  of  the  nation  concerned  and  to  the 
rights  of  other  nations  that  are  involved. 

Meantime,  we  can  only  urge  Japan  to  be  just  and  fair  to 
a  sister  people  in  a  trying  period  of  transition  and  readjust- 
ment, and  to  refrain  from  taking  improper  advantage  of 
proximity  and  superior  power.  It  is  disquieting  to  find 
that  some  careful  students  of  Chinese  affairs  believe  that 
the  Japanese  are  not  free  from  responsibility  for  the  dis- 
turbed conditions  in  China.  After  noting  a  credible  report 
that  there  were  in  1918  more  than  30,000  organized  brigands 
in  the  province  of  Shantung,  and  that  they  were  suspiciously 
well  supplied  with  rifles  and  cartridges,  Doctor  Arthur  H. 
Smith  writes:  "The  natives  who  have  been  subjected  to 
this  grilling  for  two  years  or  more  are  well  aware  that  many 
of  these  weapons  and  most  of  the  ammunition  have  been 
specially  imported  for  them  (the  bandits)  from  'a  certain 
country,'"  and  that  "but  for  the  help  of  the  natives  of  'a 
certain  country,'  the  Shantung  people  are  sure  that  things 
could  never  have  come  to  such  a  pass."1  The  Japanese  re- 
ferred to  may  have  been  acting  as  individuals  or  as  agents 
of  private  companies  which  have  munitions  to  sell ;  but  their 
alleged  relationship  to  the  disturbances,  the  fact  that  Japan 
is  in  virtual  control  of  Shantung,  and  the  further  fact  that 
these  disturbances  are  assigned  as  one  of  the  reasons  for 
her  maintenance  there  of  a  considerable  military  force 
make  it  difficult  to  contemplate  the  situation  without  un- 
easiness. 

It  would  be  well  also  if  other  nations  would  be  careful 
to  refrain  from  acts  and  policies  which  might  intensify  an 
already  tense  and  somewhat  inflammable  state  of  mind  in 
this  part  of  the  world,  and  which  might  strengthen  the 
feeling  of  the  Japanese  that  they  must  aggressively  push 
their  interests  in  self-protection.  It  was  a  Western  Power 
that  forced  Japan  to  take  Korea  and  Southern  Manchuria. 
Will  Western  Powers  now  force  Japan  to  take  China? 

1  Quoted  in  Millard's  Review,  Shanghai,  September  7,  1918. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 
JAPAN  AND  SIBERIA 

THE  Russian  Revolution  of  1917  wrought  a  change  of 
startling  magnitude  in  the  Far-Eastern  situation.  This 
change  formed  no  part  of  the  plan  of  the  revolutionists; 
it  was  a  result  of  the  course  that  they  pursued.  Their 
withdrawal  from  the  great  war,  their  internal  dissensions, 
their  inability  to  prevent  the  break-up  of  the  country  into 
several  independent  units,  and  their  helpless  submission  to 
the  demands  of  Germany  combined  to  create  a  new  and 
extraordinarily  difficult  problem  for  the  Entente  govern- 
ments. The  European  aspects  of  this  problem  do  not  lie 
within  the  range  of  our  present  discussion.  We  are  now 
concerned  with  its  Asiatic  aspects,  and  these  were  of  enor- 
mous advantage  to  Japan,  since  they  called  for  an  occu- 
pation of  eastern  Siberia,  which  was  certain  to  redound  to 
her  advantage.  Over  600,000  tons  of  provisions,  ma- 
chinery, and  military  supplies  were  said  to  be  piled  up  at 
Vladivostok,  most  of  it  in  the  open  air,  and  other  huge 
quantities  had  been  accumulated  at  Harbin  and  at  various 
stations  as  far  west  as  Irkutsk.  Most  of  these  had  been 
sold  to  Russia  by  the  Japanese,  but  they  could  not  be  sent 
on  with  any  certainty  that  they  would  get  to  their  destina- 
tion; or,  if  they  did,  that  there  would  be  any  responsible 
government  to  pay  for  them,  or  that  they  would  not  fall 
into  the  hands  of  the  Germans,  to  whom  they  would  be 
equivalent  to  a  substantial  reinforcement.  Nor  was  it  ex- 
pedient to  leave  millions  of  dollars'  worth  of  provisions  and 
equipment  to  spoil  on  the  docks  and  the  ground,  for  ware- 
house facilities  were  far  from  adequate.  It  appeared 
reasonable  that  Japan  should  protect  these  supplies,  some  of 
which  fairly  belonged  to  her  in  the  circumstances. 

447 


448  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

Japan,  too,  had  a  considerable  number  of  her  nationals 
in  Siberia.  The  Japanese  Foreign  Office  reported  that  July 
1,  1917,  there  were  9,717  Japanese  in  Russian  territory,  in- 
cluding 3,979  Koreans,  distributed  as  follows:  in  Vladivos- 
tok, 3,283;  at  other  places  under  the  jurisdiction  of  the 
Japanese  Consulate-General  at  Vladivostok,  1,762;  under 
the  jurisdiction  of  the  Consulate-General  at  Moscow,  129; 
under  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Consulate  at  Nikolaievsk, 
4,543.  Many  of  these  Japanese  had  acquired  business  in- 
terests in  which  they  naturally  expected  the  protection  of 
their  home  government. 

Another  consideration  was  more  serious.  Russia  had 
sent  many  of  her  German  and  Austrian  prisoners  of  war 
into  Siberia.  Most  of  them  were  west  of  Lake  Baikal,  but 
others  were  scattered  along  the  line  east  of  it.  Their  exact 
number  was  unknown.  Rumors  ranged  from  80,000  to 
1,000,000.  The  latter  estimate  was  certainly  a  great  ex- 
aggeration, but  the  smaller  one  was  large  enough  to  cause 
concern.  Whatever  the  number  of  Germans  and  Austrians 
was,  the  disorganization  of  the  government  had  given  them 
virtual  liberty.  It  is  true  that  they  were  still  prisoners  in 
theory,  but  they  were  not  confined  in  jails  or  camps,  and 
enjoyed  considerable  freedom  as  residents  of  villages  and 
towns,  where  their  superior  intelligence  and  industrial  effi- 
ciency had  given  them  some  prominence  and  where,  in 
many  cases,  they  lived  with  the  wives  of  Russian  men  who 
were  absent  in  the  army.  The  Russian  population  between 
Lake  Baikal  and  Vladivostok  was  only  about  3,500,000, 
including  women  and  children.  What  was  to  hinder  the 
capable  Germans  from  organizing  under  their  own  officers, 
taking  possession  of  a  large  part  of  Siberia,  and  possibly 
moving  along  the  Trans-Siberian  Railway  to  Vladivostok, 
where  there  were  not  only  immense  accumulations  of  every- 
thing that  an  army  needed  but  a  fortress  regarded  as  one 
of  the  most  impregnable  in  the  world  ?  An  Associated  Press 
despatch  from  Harbin,  February  20,  1918,  said  that  2,000 
Germans  had  been  armed  and  were  drilling  at  Irkutsk,  and 
according  to  an  official  report  received  from  a  foreign  con- 


JAPAN  AND  SIBERIA  449 

sul,  the  Germans  were  making  preparations  to  bring  much 
larger  forces  there.  A  report  that  150  Japanese  had  been 
killed  in  a  clash  with  German-aided  Russian  Maximalists 
at  Blagovieschensk  in  March,  1918,  added  to  the  excite- 
ment, although  it  was  afterward  ascertained  that  only  one 
Japanese  was  killed,  and  two  wounded. 

Perhaps  the  danger  from  this  source  was  magnified.  It 
would  not  have  been  easy  for  scattered  Germans  to  conduct 
effective  military  operations  against  a  powerful  military 
nation  like  Japan,  many  thousands  of  miles  from  their 
home  base,  and  with  a  single  line  of  communication  liable 
to  be  broken  at  a  dozen  places;  for  many  of  the  Russian 
revolutionists  did  not  love  the  Kaiser's  brand  of  autocracy 
any  better  than  the  Tsar's.  Germany  could  send  little  help 
to  her  nationals  in  Siberia,  for  she  had  her  hands  full  in 
Europe.  Indeed  many  foreigners  in  the  Far  East  felt  that 
the  German  scare  was  so  exaggerated  and  exploited  so 
persistently  and  on  such  a  wide-spread  scale  as  to  suggest 
the  suspicion  of  propaganda.  The  plea  that  intervention 
was  necessary  to  restore  order  was  met  by  the  retort  that 
this  was  Germany's  excuse  for  marching  into  Russia  after 
peace  had  been  agreed  to,  and  that  the  Allies  scoffed  at  it. 
A  man  long  resident  in  eastern  Asia  wrote  in  the  spring  of 
1918:  "The  reason  for  that  German  scare  is  out  now. 
Japan  worked  it  up  so  as  to  present  the  famous  'Group 
Five f  demands  in  a  new  form  under  the  guise  of  protecting 
China  against  the  Germans."  It  is  hardly  fair,  however, 
to  attribute  wholly  to  Japan  a  demand  for  intervention  in 
Siberia,  which  was  certainly  caused,  in  considerable  part 
at  least,  by  the  fear  of  the  French,  British,  and  American 
as  well  as  Japanese  peoples  that  Germany  might  gain  an 
alarming  ascendancy  in  northern  Asia  unless  decisive 
measures  were  adopted  to  check  her  advance.  Whatever 
the  exact  number  of  Germans  and  Austrians  in  Siberia, 
there  were  enough  of  them  to  make  a  good  deal  of  trouble. 

Where  the  suggestion  of  intervention  originated  is  a 
disputed  question.  Diplomats  well  understand  how  to 
make  soundings  of  opinion  and  bring  about  desired  situa- 


450  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

tions  before  committing  themselves  to  official  acts  or 
written  statements  that  might  fall  under  unfriendly  eyes. 
No  authorized  person,  however,  has  challenged  the  state- 
ment of  Viscount  Motono,  the  Japanese  Minister  of  Foreign 
Affairs,  in  the  Imperial  Diet,  March  26,  1918,  that  "the 
general  belief  that  intervention  was  proposed  in  Japan  is 
unfounded.  .  .  .  The  Imperial  Government  neither  sug- 
gested nor  proposed  military  action  in  Siberia.  .  .  .  Never- 
theless, it  regards  with  gravest  apprehension  the  eastward 
movement  of  Germany.  Hitherto,  Japan  has  received  no 
joint  allied  proposal,  but  if  such  a  proposal  is  received  it 
will  be  considered  most  carefully.  This  will  be  especially 
the  case  if  the  Siberian  situation  becomes  worse,  requiring 
decisive  steps  on  behalf  of  the  interests  of  the  Allies,  in 
which  event  the  Imperial  Government  will  not  hesitate  to 
take  prompt  and  adequate  measures  in  a  whole-hearted 


manner." 


The  wanton  murder  of  Mr.  Ishido,  a  Japanese  merchant 
of  Vladivostok,  April  4,  by  five  Russians,  one  of  whom  was 
in  the  uniform  of  a  Bolshevik  soldier,  hastened  the  crisis, 
and  Admiral  Saito,  commanding  the  Japanese  naval  vessels 
in  the  port,  promptly  landed  an  armed  force  to  prevent 
further  depredations.  British  marines  also  went  ashore 
as  Great  Britain,  too,  had  a  consulate  to  guard. 

When  the  formal  question  of  intervention  came  out  into 
the  open  arena,  varying  opinions  were  expressed.  All  the 
correspondence  that  passed  between  the  governments  con- 
cerned and  the  conversations  between  their  representatives 
have  not  been  made  public,  and  are  not  likely  to  be;  but 
the  general  positions  taken  are  known  and  the  newspaper 
discussions  were  along  the  same  lines. 

The  American  Government  caused  its  opinion  to  be 
given  that  such  an  occupation  of  Russian  territory  would 
be  inconsistent  with  the  motives  and  aims  of  the  United 
States  in  the  prosecution  of  the  war,  that  it  was  not  fight- 
ing for  the  protection  of  property  or  for  territorial  advan- 
tage, and  that  the  Allies  would  be  placed  in  an  awkward 
position  if  they  favored  Japanese  occupation  of  Russian 


JAPAN  AND  SIBERIA  451 

territory  in  the  East  while  denouncing  German  invasion  of 
Russian  territory  in  the  West;  the  alleged  reasons  in  both 
cases  being  substantially  the  same.  This  view  found  large 
support  in  the  public  press,  although  a  contrary  view  was 
vigorously  urged. 

European  opinion  showed  the  same  cleavage;  but  closer 
contact  with  the  war  and  clearer  realization  of  its  perils 
gave  greater  prominence  to  the  consideration  of  immediate 
military  necessity.  German  power  must  be  prevented  at 
all  hazards  from  securing  a  foothold  in  eastern  Siberia,  and 
Japan  was  the  only  nation  which  could  prevent  it.  This 
was  the  prevailing  view  in  France,  and  it  had  influential 
advocacy  in  Great  Britain,  which  was  Japan's  ally,  not 
only  in  the  war  but  under  the  Anglo-Japanese  Alliance 
which  long  preceded  it.  Objections  there  doubtless  were, 
but  war  emergencies  must  be  deemed  paramount.  Lord 
Robert  Cecil,  British  Minister  of  Blockade,  declared:  "The 
Japanese  alone  can  act  effectively  in  the  present  crisis.  If 
they  are  intrusted  by  the  Allies  with  the  duty  of  going  to 
the  assistance  of  Russia  against  Germany,  I  am  sure  they 
will  carry  out  the  task  with  perfect  loyalty  and  great  effi- 
ciency. It  would  be  in  the  highest  degree  foolish,  if  not 
criminal,  if  the  Entente  failed  to  take  every  step  possible 
to  frustrate  this  German  scheme." 

And  yet  there  had  been  for  some  time  a  growing  uneasi- 
ness among  British  merchants  and  public  men  about  the 
overshadowing  ascendancy  which  war  conditions  were  giv- 
ing to  Japan  in  the  Far  East — an  ill-concealed  fear  that  by 
the  time  the  war  ceased  British  interests  in  that  part  of 
the  world  would  be  gone  beyond  recovery.  They  now  sug- 
gested that  Vladivostok  be  occupied  by  a  joint  expedition 
of  Japanese,  British,  and  American  troops,  so  that  it  would 
be  clear  that  the  move  would  be  by  the  Allies  as  a  whole, 
and  that  the  benefit  would  not  accrue  to  any  one  of  them 
alone.  Of  course,  Japan  would  supply  the  bulk  of  the  oc- 
cupying force,  but  it  was  urged  that  even  a  small  force  of 
British  and  American  troops  would  give  an  international 
character  to  the  expedition. 


452  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

China  liked  this  suggestion  and  wanted  to  be  represented. 
She  had  not  only  become  an  ally  by  her  declaration  of  war 
against  Germany,  but  she  had  special  interests  at  stake, 
since  Manchuria  was  supposed  to  belong  to  her  and  to  be 
under  her  civil  and  military  jurisdiction,  except  for  certain 
places  and  railroad  rights  of  way  which  had  been  extorted 
from  her.  If  the  government  that  held  some  of  these  leases 
was  unable  to  protect  foreign  interests,  and  intervention 
became  necessary,  who  was  so  vitally  concerned  as  China? 
If  she  herself  was  too  disorganized  by  internal  troubles  to 
act  alone,  she  certainly  had  a  right  to  act  in  conjunction 
with  any  other  Power. 

Japan  acquiesced  in  this,  and  March  25,  1918,  the  Japa- 
nese and  Chinese  Governments  entered  into  a  joint  agree- 
ment, which  was  withheld  from  publication  for  a  time. 
When  knowledge  of  it  leaked  out  and  became  the  object 
of  suspicion,  the  Chinese  Government  authorized  the  fol- 
lowing statement,  May  19:  "In  view  of  the  circulation  of 
false  reports,  it  is  necessary  to  inform  the  Chinese  people 
of  the  facts  of  the  negotiations.  Since  the  conclusion  of 
peace  between  the  Russian  Maximalists  and  the  enemy,  the 
fear  has  existed  in  Japan  and  China  of  an  eastward  intru- 
sion of  German  influence.  On  account  of  the  propinquity 
of  their  territory,  the  governments  recognized  the  necessity 
of  a  definite  arrangement  for  joint  defense.  This  joint  de- 
fense concerns  military  movements  in  Siberia  and  Man- 
churia, and  has  no  reference  to  other  matters.  The  scheme 
will  become  null  and  void  with  the  termination  of  the  war. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  convention  will  not  be  forced  un- 
less the  influence  of  the  enemy  actually  penetrates  Siberia. 
It  is  not  a  treaty  but  an  entente,  which  will  become  a  scrap 
of  paper  if  there  is  no  enemy  menace.  The  sole  reason  for 
the  non-publication  of  the  contents  is  the  preservation  of 
the  secret  from  the  enemy.  The  convention  does  not  in- 
volve the  loss  of  sovereign  territorial  rights  and  Japan  gains 
no  privileges." 

The  Japanese  Government  supplemented  this  by  an 
official  statement,  June  8,  to  the  same  general  effect. 


JAPAN  AND  SIBERIA  453 

Japan  looked  askance  at  the  proposal  for  European  rep- 
resentation in  the  expedition,  on  the  ground  that  it  implied 
distrust  of  her  intentions.  And  it  did.  It  had  no  other 
basis  whatever.  Japan  was  fully  able  to  do  the  job  her- 
self, and  she  quite  naturally  resented  the  apparent  insinua- 
tion that  a  handful  of  European  and  American  troops  should 
go  along  to  watch  her  and  to  see  that  she  did  not  take 
unfair  advantage  of  the  opportunity.  The  Tokyo  Hochi 
editorially  quoted,  August  5,  Prime  Minister  Lloyd  George's 
statement  that  "there  is  only  one  country  having  access  to 
Russia  on  a  grand  scale.  That  is  Japan,  and  the  difficul- 
ties with  regard  to  that  nation  are  well  known."  "What 
are  these  difficulties?"  the  editor  sharply  inquired.  "Why 
should  Count  Terauchi  and  President  Wilson  permit  them- 
selves to  be  regarded  as  the  creators  of  these  difficulties?" 

Japan  had  cogent  reasons,  however,  for  not  pressing  into 
Siberia  alone  against  the  judgment  of  her  allies.  She  did 
not  want  to  jeopardize  her  amicable  relations  with  Great 
Britain  and  the  United  States.  Her  statesmen  clearly  saw 
that  intervention  in  Siberia  was  inevitable  sooner  or  later, 
and  that  when  it  came,  Japan's  proximity  to  the  theatre 
of  operations,  her  ability  to  use  whatever  force  might  be 
necessary,  and  the  fact  that  the  British  and  Americans 
were  obliged  to  concentrate  their  efforts  in  France  would 
necessarily  give  Japan  whatever  measure  of  leadership  she 
needed.  She  could  afford  to  wait,  therefore,  until  the 
London  and  Washington  governments  realized  that  further 
delay  was  dangerous. 

The  outcome  proved  the  wisdom  of  Japan's  prudence. 
By  the  latter  part  of  July  conditions  in  Siberia  imperatively 
required  Allied  action.  A  considerable  number  of  Czecho- 
slovak soldiers  refused  to  accept  the  humiliating  terms  of 
the  Brest-Litovsk  peace  treaty  which  Germany  forced  upon 
the  helpless  and  subservient  Russian  Revolutionary  Govern- 
ment. When  the  Bolshevik  government  in  Petrograd  tried 
to  coerce  them  into  obedience,  hostilities  broke  out  between 
the  opposing  factions.  Some  of  the  Czecho-Slovaks  kept 
up  the  struggle  in  Russia,  and  others  managed  to  make 


454  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

their  way  across  Siberia  in  the  hope  of  joining  the  Allied 
armies  in  France.  Some  day  a  story  of  epic  interest  may 
be  written  regarding  that  comparative  handful  of  brave 
and  determined  men,  cut  off  from  all  communication  with 
the  outside  world,  trying  to  keep  on  good  terms  with  the 
friendly  or  neutral  peoples  through  whose  territories  they 
had  to  pass  and  from  whom  they  had  to  secure  some  sup- 
plies, and  opposed  all  the  way  not  only  by  German  and 
Austrian  influence  but  by  the  Bolshevik  Red  Guards,  who 
fiercely  fought  them  at  every  opportunity.  It  was  un- 
thinkable that  these  heroic  men  should  be  left  to  struggle 
and  die  unaided — martyrs  to  their  devotion  to  the  cause  of 
the  Allies. 

Meantime,  the  situation  in  Siberia  was  becoming  more 
tumultuous.  The  Siberians  had  declared  their  indepen- 
dence of  Russia  and  set  up  a  provisional  government.  But 
the  discordant  elements  in  the  population  could  not  coalesce. 
A  medley  of  military  forces  were  in  the  field — Bolshevik  and 
anti-Bolshevik,  pro-German  and  pro-Ally.  July  18,  Gen- 
eral Horvath,  one  of  the  anti-Bolshevik  leaders,  proclaimed 
himself  dictator  of  Siberia.  This  angered  the  provisional 
Siberian  government  and  brought  protests  from  the  French, 
British  and  Japanese  Ministers  in  Peking. 

Fifteen  thousand  Czecho-Slovaks,  finding  on  their  ar- 
rival at  Vladivostok  that  the  Bolsheviki  were  in  control  of 
the  city,  marched  into  it  June  30,  captured  the  headquarters 
of  the  Soviet,  and  seized  the  municipal  offices,  the  bank, 
and  a  quantity  of  ammunition.  There  was  some  fighting 
in  which  the  Czecho-Slovaks  had  3  men  killed  and  155 
wounded;  while  the  Soviet  forces  had  51  killed  and  159 
wounded.  British,  American,  Japanese  and  Chinese  war- 
ships in  the  harbor  landed  small  forces  to  protect  their 
consulates.  The  victorious  Czecho-Slovaks  postponed  their 
plans  for  proceeding  to  France  and  began  to  move  westward 
in  order  to  co-operate  with  the  other  Czecho-Slovak  forces 
which  were  struggling  at  several  points  along  the  Trans- 
Siberian  Railway.  The  various  factions  among  the  Si- 
berians grew  more  angry  and  clamorous;  the  Germans  and 


JAPAN  AND  SIBERIA  455 

Austrians  redoubled  their  activity,  and  the  whole  country 
was  in  tumult. 

All  this  time  negotiations  between  the  Allied  governments 
were  in  progress.  President  Wilson  was  the  one  waited 
for.  August  3  the  State  Department  in  Washington  an- 
nounced the  conclusions  that  he  had  reached,  to  which  the 
Japanese  Government  had  assented,  and  which  the  other 
Allied  governments  had  accepted  in  principle.  The  text  of 
the  statement  issued  by  the  Acting  Secretary  of  State  was 
as  follows: 

"In  the  judgment  of  the  Government  of  the  United  States  .  .  . 
military  intervention  in  Russia  would  be  more  likely  to  add  to  the 
present  sad  confusion  there  than  to  cure  it,  and  would  be  more  likely 
to  turn  out  to  be  merely  a  method  of  making  use  of  Russia  than  to 
be  a  method  of  serving  her.  .  .  .  Military  action  is  admissible  in 
Russia  now  only  to  render  such  protection  and  help  as  is  possible  to 
the  Czecho-Slovaks  against  the  armed  Austrian  and  German  pris- 
oners who  are  attacking  them,  and  to  steady  any  efforts  at  self- 
government  or  self-defense  in  which  the  Russians  themselves  may 
be  willing  to  accept  assistance.  Whether  from  Vladivostok  or  from 
Murmansk  and  Archangel,  the  only  present  object  for  which  Ameri- 
can troops  will  be  employed  will  be  to  guard  military  stores  which 
may  subsequently  be  needed  by  Russian  forces,  and  to  render  such 
aid  as  may  be  acceptable  to  the  Russians  in  the  organization  of  their 
own  self-defense.  .  .  .  The  United  States  and  Japan  are  the  only 
powers  which  are  just  now  in  a  position  to  act  in  Siberia  in  sufficient 
force  to  accomplish  even  such  modest  objects  as  those  that  have  been 
outlined.  The  Government  of  the  United  States  has,  therefore,  pro- 
posed to  the  Government  of  Japan  that  each  of  the  two  Governments 
send  a  force  of  a  few  thousand  men  to  Vladivostok,  with  the  purpose 
of  co-operating  as  a  single  force  in  the  occupation  of  Vladivostok  and 
in  safeguarding,  so  far  as  it  may,  the  country  to  the  rear  of  the  west- 
ward-moving Czecho-Slovaks,  and  the  Japanese  Government  has 
consented.  In  taking  this  action  the  Government  of  the  United 
States  wishes  to  announce  to  the  people  of  Russia  in  the  most  public 
and  solemn  manner  that  it  contemplates  no  interference  with  the 
political  sovereignty  of  Russia,  not  even  in  the  local  affairs  of  the 
limited  areas  which  her  military  force  may  be  obliged  to  occupy — 
and  no  impairment  of  her  territorial  integrity,  either  now  or  here- 
after, but  that  what  we  are  about  to  do  has  as  its  single  and  only 
object  the  rendering  of  such  aid  as  shall  be  acceptable  to  the  Rus- 
sian people  themselves  in  their  endeavors  to  regain  control  of  their 


456  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

own  affairs,  their  own  territory,  and  their  own  destiny.    The  Japa- 
nese Government,  it  is  understood,  will  issue  a  similar  assurance." 

The  preceding  evening,  the  Official  Gazette  at  Tokyo  pub- 
lished a  declaration  emphasizing  the  Japanese  Govern- 
ment's "sincere  friendship  toward  the  Russian  people"; 
the  danger  "that  the  Central  European  Empires,  taking 
advantage  of  the  defenseless  and  chaotic  condition  in  which 
Russia  has  momentarily  been  placed,  are  consolidating  their 
hold  on  that  country,  and  are  steadily  extending  their  ac- 
tivities to  Russia's  eastern  possessions";  the  necessity  of 
aiding  the  Gzecho-Slovak  troops,  who  "justly  command 
every  sympathy  and  consideration  from  the  co-belligerents, 
to  whom  their  destiny  is  a  matter  of  deep  and  abiding  con- 
cern;" and  closing  with  the  statement: 

"The  Japanese  Government,  being  anxious  to  fall  in  with  the  de- 
sire of  the  American  Government,  have  decided  to  proceed  at  once  to 
make  disposition  of  suitable  forces  for  the  proposed  mission,  and  a 
certain  number  of  these  troops  will  be  sent  forthwith  to  Vladivostok. 

"In  adopting  this  course,  the  Japanese  Government  remain  con- 
stant in  their  desire  to  promote  relations  of  enduring  friendship, 
and  they  reaffirm  their  avowed  policy  of  respecting  the  territorial 
integrity  of  Russia,  and  of  abstaining  from  all  interference  in  her 
internal  politics.  They  further  declare  that  upon  the  realization  of 
the  objects  above  indicated,  they  will  immediately  withdraw  all 
Japanese  troops  from  Russian  territory,  and  will  leave  wholly  unim- 
paired the  sovereignty  of  Russia  in  all  its  phases,  whether  political 
or  military." 

The  assurances  of  friendly  sentiments  toward  Russia 
were  of  course  diplomatic,  but  they  were  undoubtedly  sin- 
cere on  the  part  of  both  governments.  The  good-will  of 
America  had  been  long  known.  In  the  case  of  Japan, 
friendly  relations  with  the  government  of  the  Czar  had 
been  cultivated  for  several  years,  as  it  was  to  the  interests 
of  both  Powers  to  work  together  for  the  time  in  Far  Eastern 
affairs.  In  the  agreement  of  July  3,  1916,  Russia  had 
delegated  to  Japan  the  right  of  military  protection  of  her 
Eastern  possessions,  thus  enabling  Russia  to  withdraw  her 


JAPAN  AND  SIBERIA  457 

military  forces  from  the  East  for  employment  on  the  West- 
ern front  in  Europe.  The  unpublished  parts  of  the  agree- 
ment recognized  Japan's  equality  of  right  in  the  navigation 
of  the  three  great  rivers  of  northern  Manchuria,  the  Amur, 
the  Nonni,  and  the  Sungari,  an  important  recognition.  In 
view,  however,  of  the  fact  that,  after  the  revolution,  large 
sections  of  Russia,  including  Siberia,  had  seceded  and  set 
up  independent  governments,  a  question  may  arise  as  to 
the  precise  meaning  in  August,  1918,  of  the  phrase,  "the 
territorial  integrity  of  Russia."  To  what  extent  is  Siberia 
to  remain  a  part  of  Russia  ? 

Protestations  that  the  occupation  was  to  be  "merely 
temporary  as  a  war  measure"  are  not  to  be  taken  too  seri- 
ously, however  sincerely  made.  Governments  always  make 
such  declarations  when  they  enter  territories  of  weaker 
peoples,  but  conditions  usually  arise  to  postpone  perform- 
ance. Of  the  many  seizures  by  various  nations  in  China, 
Manchuria,  Korea,  Siam,  the  Philippines,  and  the  Pacific 
Islands,  which  one  has  ever  been  relinquished  except  under 
compulsion?  Grant  that  in  some  cases  the  reasons  for 
staying  are  sound;  the  fact  is  none  the  less  indisputable. 
The  original  declaration  may  have  been  honestly  made  as 
an  expression  of  intention  at  the  tune;  but  a  later  adminis- 
tration is  apt  to  decide  for  itself  whether  the  time  has  come 
to  act  under  it. 

There  were  ample  reasons  for  President  Wilson's  cautious 
refusal  to  favor  the  grandiose  plan  of  a  large  military  ex- 
pedition. Even  if  so  many  troops  and  supplies  could  have 
been  spared  from  the  Western  front  in  Europe  and  trans- 
ported the  long  voyage  to  Vladivostok,  it  would  not  have 
been  as  delightfully  simple  a  task  as  armchair  civilians 
imagined  to  get  them  across  the  interminable  expanse  of 
Siberia  on  a  single  railroad,  whose  hundreds  of  bridges  and 
tunnels  could  be  easily  destroyed  by  the  Germans.  Gen- 
eral Peyton  C.  March,  Chief  of  Staff  of  the  American  Army, 
plainly  said  that  "the  idea  of  trying  to  establish  an  eastern 
front  in  Russia  with  a  handful  of  Americans  is  simply 
ridiculous." 


458  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

A  more  ominous  aspect  of  the  question  received  less 
public  attention,  but  it  did  not  escape  the  notice  of  the 
British  and  American  Governments.  I  refer  to  the  probable 
effect  of  such  action  upon  the  Russian  people.  The  reasons 
for  intervention  were  gratifyingly  apparent  to  the  Allies. 
But  would  they  be  to  the  Russians?  If  the  people  of 
Russia  had  been  in  a  position  to  know  all  the  facts  and  to 
weigh  them  intelligently,  it  is  conceivable  that  they  might 
have  concurred  in  intervention  and  perhaps  even  wel- 
comed it.  But  about  80  per  cent  of  them  are  illiterate, 
and  the  information  that  reaches  them  is  usually  distorted 
to  suit  the  ideas  of  the  persons  who  disseminate  it.  Ger- 
man propagandists  literally  swarmed  throughout  Russia 
and  Siberia  and  labored  to  prejudice  the  popular  mind 
against  the  Allies  and  in  favor  of  Germany.  They  did  not 
fail  to  see  the  use  that  they  could  make  of  the  proposed  oc- 
cupation of  Russian  territory,  and  they  promptly  proceeded 
to  inflame  public  sentiment  against  "the  unwarranted  in- 
vasion of  Russian  soil  by  professed  Allies  which  had  now 
become  enemies."  As  for  the  educated  men  who  were  in 
power,  they  were  believed  to  be  more  pro-German  than 
pro-Ally.  They  certainly  had  no  special  love  for  the 
Entente  Allies,  and  they  repeatedly  declared  their  belief 
that  on  both  sides  "this  is  a  war  of  the  capitalistic  and  im- 
perialistic classes,  which  are  sacrificing  the  common  people 
to  their  selfish  interests."  The  danger  was,  therefore,  that 
any  move  on  the  part  of  the  Allies  which  could  be  rep- 
resented or  misrepresented  as  inimical  to  Russia  might 
play  directly  into  the  hands  of  Germany  by  leading  the 
Siberians  and  large  sections  of  the  population  of  European 
Russia  to  make  common  cause  with  her  in  "resisting  ag- 
gression." 

Almost  incredible  as  this  may  appear  to  Americans,  it 
was  by  no  means  improbable.  It  is  significant  that  Rus- 
sians in  America  strongly  protested  against  any  campaign 
in  eastern  Siberia,  whether  conducted  by  the  Japanese  alone 
or  by  a  joint  expedition.  One  could  imagine  how  much 
more  resentful  the  people  of  Russia  might  be,  since  the 


JAPAN  AND  SIBERIA  459 

Germans  could  get  their  special  version  of  the  case  before 
them,  and  the  Allies  could  not  get  theirs;  for  Germany 
controlled  all  avenues  of  approach,  and  could  tell  the  Slavs 
whatever  she  pleased.  The  ambitions  attributed  to  Japan 
have  long  been  deemed  ominous  by  the  peoples  on  the 
mainland  of  eastern  Asia.  A  Western  newspaper  corre- 
spondent, who  visited  Siberia  early  in  1918,  wrote:  "It  is 
astonishing  how  deep-rooted  the  anti-Japanese  sentiment 
in  Siberia  has  become.  The  Japanese  menace  was  very 
real  to  the  people  of  Pri-Amur.  A  Russian  from  Irkutsk 
told  me  that  his  wife  used  the  threat  of  a  Japanese  invasion 
to  quiet  the  children.  In  Harbin,  wild  action  on  the  part 
of  the  Committee  of  Soldiers'  and  Workmen's  Delegates 
was  held  in  check  more  than  once  by  a  reminder  that  any 
serious  breaches  of  the  peace  would  result  in  the  coming 
of  Japanese  troops  from  Manchuria.  I  talked  with  a  num- 
ber of  Russians  of  several  classes  about  the  possibility  that 
Japan  might  have  to  guard  the  accumulated  stores  in 
Vladivostok.  Nowhere  in  Siberia  did  I  find  a  Russian  in 
favor  of  this."  l 

The  Bolshevik  leaders,  both  in  Siberia  and  Russia, 
promptly  denounced  the  proposed  intervention.  When  the 
Japanese  and  British  warships  landed  small  forces  at 
Vladivostok  to  protect  their  own  nationals,  after  the  mur- 
der of  Mr.  Ishido,  April  4,  the  local  Council  of  Soldiers' 
and  Workmen's  Delegates  protested  to  the  consular  corps, 
and  the  Council  of  People's  Commissaries  in  Moscow, 
claiming  to  represent  "the  All-Siberian  Soviets,"  declared 
its  indignation  and  ordered  "all  the  Soviets  in  Siberia  to 
offer  armed  resistance  to  an  enemy  incursion  into  Russian 
territory."  July  29  the  Bolshevik  Premier,  Lenine,  said 
to  the  Central  Executive  Committee  of  the  Soviets  that  a 
state  of  war  existed  between  the  Russian  Republic  and  the 
Allied  Powers.  He  added:  "The  fatal  plans  of  Anglo- 
French  imperialism  can  only  be  frustrated  if  we  succeed 
in  crushing  the  Czecho-Slovaks  and  their  counter-revolu- 
tionary partisans  on  the  Volga,  in  the  Urals,  and  in  Siberia. 

1  Article  in  the  New  York  Times,  March  17,  1918. 


460  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

This  is  the  urgent  task  and  all  others  must  be  relegated  to 
the  background.  All  our  forces  must  be  devoted  to  the 
war."  l 

This  utterance  was  enthusiastically  cheered.  The  con- 
suls-general of  France,  Great  Britain,  and  the  United  States 
asked  Foreign  Minister  Tchitcherin  for  an  explanation, 
and  August  2  he  sent  a  long  reply  in  which  he  bitterly 
charged  that  the  course  of  the  British  and  French  at  Arch- 
angel and  Vladivostok  was  "a  completely  unjustifiable 
act";  that  "without  a  declaration  of  war  hostilities  are 
opened  against  us";  that  "despite  the  existing  state  of 
peace,  Anglo-French  armed  forces  have  invaded  our  terri- 
tory, taken  our  towns  and  villages  by  force,  dissolved  our 
workers'  organizations,  imprisoned  their  members,  and 
driven  them  from  their  homes  without  any  reason  possibly 
warranting  these  predatory  acts";  and  that  "these  people, 
who  did  not  declare  war  against  us,  act  like  barbarians 
toward  us." 

The  attack  on  the  British  Embassy  in  Petrograd,  August 
31,  with  the  murder  of  Captain  Francis  Cromie,  the  attache", 
and  the  attack  on  the  British  Consulate  in  Moscow,  Sep- 
tember 4,  both  apparently  at  the  instigation  of  the  govern- 
ment, showed  that  the  Bolshevik  authorities  were  fiercely 
anti-British.  As  for  America,  the  Russian  leaders  regarded 
the  United  States  with  suspicion  and  dislike,  in  spite  of 
President  Wilson's  expression  of  friendship.  Trotzky  and 
several  others  had  formerly  been  in  America.  They  had 
lived  in  the  squalid  tenements  of  its  poorest  and  most  con- 
gested quarters.  The  America  of  their  experience  was  a 
land  of  the  sweat-shops  of  New  York,  the  mines  of  Penn- 
sylvania, and  the  stock-yards  of  Chicago — of  toiling  masses 
in  bitter  poverty,  a  "capitalistic  imperialism,"  where  the 
"rich  oppressed  the  poor  and  controlled  the  government  in 
the  interest  of  privilege. ' '  From  their  radical  socialistic  view- 
point, America,  while  politically  democratic,  is  industrially 
autocratic,  and  they  were  against  its  social  organization 

1  Cable  of  De  Witt  C.  Poole,  Jr.,  American  Consul  at  Moscow,  to  the  Wash- 
ington Department  of  State,  July  31,  1918. 


JAPAN  AND  SIBERIA  461 

as  well  as  against  that  of  imperial  Russia  and  militaristic 
Germany.  They  hated  an  economic  system  which  they 
regarded  as  vesting  absolute  ownership  and  control  of  a 
business  or  factory  in  the  one  or  more  individuals  who  own 
it  and  counting  all  the  workmen  as  mere  employees  who 
have  no  voice  in  the  management,  no  share  in  the  profits 
except  such  wages  or  bonus  as  the  owners  may  choose  to 
give,  and  who  may  be  discharged  at  any  tune  at  the  will 
of  the  employer.  This,  to  the  Russian  socialists,  is  the 
type  of  autocracy  which  they  are  determined  to  overthrow, 
and  this  they  believe  to  exist  in  the  United  States  as  well  as 
in  other  countries.  When  the  All-Russian  Congress  of 
Soviets  assembled  in  Moscow,  March  11,  1918,  President 
Wilson  cabled  a  message  of  greeting.  The  Soviets  received 
it  with  hearty  applause  but  replied,  in  the  name  of  "the 
Russian  Socialist  Soviet  Republic,"  "first  of  all  to  the 
laboring  and  exploited  classes  in  the  United  States."  They 
spoke  of  "all  peoples"  as  "suffering  from  this  imperialistic 
war,"  and  called  upon  "the  laboring  classes  in  all  bourgeois 
countries,"  apparently  including  the  United  States,  to 
"throw  off  the  capitalistic  yoke  and  establish  a  socialistic 
state  of  society"  as  "the  only  one  capable  of  assuring  a 
permanent  and  just  peace." 

"Why  have  the  Bolshevik  failed  so  utterly  to  understand 
President  Wilson  ?  "  a  New  York  editor  asked  a  distinguished 
newspaper  correspondent  who  had  recently  returned  from 
Petrograd.  "Among  the  Bolsheviki  the  United  States  has 
the  reputation  of  being  a  nation  of  money-grabbers,"  he 
replied.  "You  see,  the  only  part  of  the  United  States 
which  the  Bolshevists  know  is  Hester  Street  in  New  York. 
That  was  where  they  lived  in  the  United  States.  That  is 
where  their  relatives  live  to-day.  They  judge  the  United 
States  by  Hester  Street."  "Socialist  Russia,"  declared 
Trotzky,  March  19,  "can  never  place  itself  under  obliga- 
tions to  capitalistic  America." 

It  was  comforting  to  our  minds  to  hear  it  said  that  the 
Bolshevik  government  did  not  truly  represent  the  people 
of  Russia,  and  that  it  was  a  contemptible  tyranny  of  so- 


462  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

cialistic  radicals  anyhow.  Unfortunately,  wretched  trav- 
esty of  government  as  it  was,  it  happened  to  be  the  only 
government  that  Russia  had  at  the  time,  and  it  was  in 
possession  of  the  capital,  the  seals  of  state,  and  whatever 
authority  existed.  Any  dealings  with  Russia  had,  per- 
force, to  be  with  it,  for  the  simple  reason  that  there  was  no 
other  government  to  deal  with. 

It  was  disconcerting,  too,  to  reflect  that  it  might  please 
Germany  to  have  the  Allies  make  a  military  demonstration 
in  Russian  territory,  which  the  Russians  would  regard  as  a 
hostile  act,  and  thus  widen  the  breach  between  them  and 
the  Allies.  Nor  were  the  Bolsheviki  to  be  despised  as  a 
mere  handful  of  men  in  power.  Their  local  councils  were 
scattered  all  over  the  country.  It  is  significant  that  in  the 
spring  of  1918,  while  the  events  referred  to  in  this  chapter 
were  transpiring,  an  election  took  place  in  Vladivostok, 
and  was  carried  by  the  Bolsheviki  by  a  decided  majority. 
Parties  and  leaders  may  change;  Constitutional  Democrats, 
Maximalists,  Bolsheviki,  Soviets,  and  Councils  of  Work- 
men's and  Soldiers'  Delegates  may  come  and  go;  Milyu- 
koffs,  Kerenskys,  Lenines,  and  Trotzkys  may  rise  and  fall, 
but  radical  socialism  remains  the  underlying  principle  of 
the  men  now  at  the  top  of  the  social  heap  in  Russia.  The 
peasant  at  the  bottom  of  the  heap  wants  land,  and  any 
government  that  lets  him  have  it  can  do  pretty  much  as 
it  pleases  in  international  relations. 

A  further  disquieting  fact  was  not  overlooked,  and  that 
was  that  the  treaties  which  the  German  Government 
forced  upon  the  Ukraine,  Russia,  and  Rumania  in  February 
and  March,  1918,  ceded  enough  territory  to  Germany's 
Allies  to  open  a  new  route  from  Berlin  via  the  Black  Sea 
ports  to  Samsun,  Trebizond,  Batum,  and  thence  to  Meso- 
potamia, Persia,  Afghanistan,  India,  and  indeed  almost 
any  part  of  Asia  that  the  Teutons  might  care  to  reach. 
They  already  possessed  practically  all  of  the  coveted 
Berlin-Baghdad  route,  except  Baghdad  itself,  and  they 
now  obtained  another  independent  and  more  easily  protected 
route  to  Asia,  from  which  it  would  be  exceedingly  difficult 
to  dislodge  them. 


JAPAN  AND  SIBERIA  463 

Japan  could  not  be  reasonably  blamed  for  regarding  this 
prospect  with  profound  anxiety.  From  the  view-point  of 
the  political  and  military  necessities  which  her  geographi- 
cal position  imposes,  she  has  ample  ground  for  believing 
that  Vladivostok  and  its  hinterland  are  related  to  her  na- 
tional safety  and  development.  She  has  more  than  once 
frankly  declared  that,  as  compared  with  Western  nations, 
she  has  a  paramount  interest  in  the  Far  East.  One  has 
studied  Far  Eastern  affairs  during  recent  decades  to  poor 
advantage  if  he  does  not  know  that  occupation  of  any  part 
of  Manchuria,  and  of  a  strongly  intrenched  position  at 
Vladivostok,  by  a  European  Power  has  long  been  a  source 
of  well-founded  anxiety  to  the  Japanese.  To  imagine  that 
they  were  averse  to  having  an  opportunity  to  end  it  would 
be  to  attribute  to  them  a  saintliness  of  self-abnegation 
which  few,  if  any,  Western  nations  would  show  in  similar 
circumstances.  Kenkichi  Mori  wrote:  "No  statement  of 
the  President  [Wilson!  prevents  Japan  from  taking  precau- 
tionary measures  in  Siberia.  It  must  be  remembered  that 
Japan  is  immediately  affected  by  the  German  invasion  of 
Russia.  .  .  .  Accordingly,  Japan  reserves  the  right  of  ac- 
tion and  can  act  whenever  she  thinks  it  necessary  for  her 
self-preservation.  .  .  .  Japan  is  not  going  to  invade 
Russia,  but  is  going  to  intervene  if  the  disturbance  created 
in  that  country  by  Japan's  enemies  menaces  her  security, 
together  with  the  interests  of  her  allies.  ...  It  would  be 
a  great  mistake  to  think  that  the  issues  of  the  war  are 
going  to  be  decided  in  Europe  alone.  The  war  is  being 
fought  not  only  on  the  Western  front,  but  also  in  the  East, 
and  disintegrated  Russia  gives  to  the  Central  Powers  some 
important  strategic  points  from  which  to  strike  at  the  pos- 
sessions of  the  Allies  in  the  Orient,  so  that  the  enemies  will 
be  at  liberty  to  eventually,  but  in  short  time,  threaten  the 
Pacific." 

Intervention  having  been  decided  upon  by  the  govern- 
ments concerned,  there  was  no  delay  in  acting.  The  Japa- 
nese, of  course,  could  act  easily  and  quickly,  as  they  had 
their  whole  army  near  by,  and  the  British  and  French 
Governments  contented  themselves  with  comparatively 


464  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

small  detachments,  chiefly  from  their  available  forces  in 
the  Far  East.  The  Japanese  force  was  naturally  the  largest 
and  its  general  was  commander-in-chief  of  the  Allied  expedi- 
tion. Vladivostok  was  occupied  as  a  base,  and  regiments 
pushed  out  from  it  to  several  strategic  points,  the  Japanese 
occupying  Blagovieschensk,  the  capital  of  Amur  Province, 
September  18.  There  were  no  aggressive  operations  on  a 
large  scale,  as  the  opposition  was  not  sufficiently  united, 
organized,  and  equipped  to  offer  effective  resistance.  The 
expedition,  therefore,  simply  took  such  steps  as  appeared 
necessary  for  the  protection  of  the  Allied  interests  and  the 
maintenance  of  order,  while  the  conflicting  parties  in  Si- 
beria and  the  anxious  governments  in  Europe  were  trying 
to  see  whether  any  sort  of  coherency  could  be  brought  out 
of  the  chaos  and  a  civil  administration  established  under 
auspices  that  would  not  make  it  a  menace  to  the  peace  of 
the  Far  East. 

Time,  and  perhaps  a  good  deal  of  it,  will  be  required  for 
the  working  out  of  the  various  and  complicated  problems 
that  are  involved.  The  close  of  the  World  War  in  Novem- 
ber, 1918,  and  the  downfall  of  the  Prussian  military  autoc- 
racy eliminated  the  German  menace  from  the  Far  Eastern 
problem.  But  Siberia  is  still  Siberia — a  vast,  fertile,  sparsely 
populated,  politically  weak  and  disorganized  region,  lying 
just  where  its  relation  to  Far  Eastern  problems  renders  it 
of  crucial  importance.  In  so  far  as  eastern  Siberia  is  con- 
cerned, Japan  is  quite  right  in  insisting  upon  having  a  dis- 
tinct voice  in  the  settlement,  just  as  the  United  States 
proposes  to  have  a  distinct  voice  in  settling  those  which 
affect  the  Western  hemisphere.  Japan  hopes  that  the 
reasonableness  of  her  claim  will  be  recognized  and  respected. 
She  would  sincerely  regret  the  necessity  of  sustaining  it 
by  any  action  which  would  be  deprecated  by  her  allies; 
but  she  feels  that  she  cannot  be  indifferent  to  the  possi- 
ble bearing  of  the  situation  upon  her  vital  national  inter- 
ests. Her  limited  territory,  her  overcrowded  and  rapidly 
increasing  population,  and  her  virtual  exclusion  from  the 
very  large  part  of  the  world  that  is  controlled  by  the  Eu- 


JAPAN  AND  SIBERIA  465 

ropean  and  American  nations,  compel  her  to  look  to  the 
adjoining  parts  of  northern  Asia  as  her  most  practicable 
sphere  of  development. 

China  has  rights  there  which  should  not  be  ignored,  but 
if  I  were  a  Japanese  I  should  feel  that  my  country's  claim 
to  eastern  Siberia  and  northern  Manchuria  was  stronger 
than  the  claim  of  any  Western  nation.  Russia  has  no  title 
to  these  regions  except  that  she  took  them  under  extorted 
treaties  because  she  felt  that  she  needed  them  in  the  inter- 
ests of  national  expansion.  Such  treaties  have  a  certain 
legal  and  diplomatic  validity,  and  undoubtedly  must  have 
some  recognition  hi  international  procedure,  especially  after 
they  have  received  the  sanction  of  time  and  general  ac- 
quiescence. China,  however,  never  gave  anything  more 
than  an  enforced  acquiescence  to  Russia's  occupation. 
The  people  of  Manchuria  and  of  eastern  Siberia,  such  as 
they  were,  were  never  consulted  at  all;  and  what  recogni- 
tion Japan  gave  was  dictated  by  temporary  military  condi- 
tions. Of  moral  right  to  the  region  in  question,  Russia 
never  had  more  than  a  shadow.  The  United  States  has 
enough  territory  of  its  own;  and  yet  an  American  can  un- 
derstand how  he  would  feel  if  a  European  or  Asiatic  Power 
were  to  occupy  Mexico.  He  would  want  that  Power  to 
get  out,  and  would  quite  readily  salve  his  conscience  in 
case  any  local  conditions  were  to  give  his  government  an 
opportunity  to  facilitate  the  ousting.  However  strong 
one's  sympathies  may  be  with  China,  and  mine  are  very 
strong,  one  must  concede  that,  as  between  Japan  and  other 
world-powers,  the  equities  of  the  case  are  overwhehningly 
with  Japan. 


PART  IV 

CHRISTIAN  MISSIONS  IN  THE  PROBLEM 
OF  THE  FAR  EAST 


CHAPTER  XXIX 
THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CHRISTIAN  MISSIONS 

WE  have  considered  the  chief  political  forces  in  the  Far 
East  whose  policies  and  methods  have  sometimes  operated 
independently,  at  other  times  conflictingly,  and  at  still 
others  jointly.  But  another  force  is  operating,  with  less 
noise  but  with  more  depth,  a  force  more  far-reaching  in 
character  and  results — the  force  of  Christian  missions.  It 
is  the  most  pervasive  and  reconstructive  of  all  forces. 
Others  effect  more  or  less  extensive  changes  in  externals; 
but  this  effects  an  internal  transformation.  Others  may 
make  man  outwardly  a  more  decent  animal,  and  give  him 
greater  efficiency  in  the  struggle  for  supremacy.  But,  as 
St.  Paul  said,  "if  any  man  be  in  Christ  Jesus  he  is  a  new 
creature."  This  transformation  involves  not  only  the  man 
himself  but  all  his  relationships  and  environments.  The 
"great  voice"  that  St.  John  heard  declared:  "Behold,  I 
make  all  things  new."  The  missionary  objective  was  finely 
expressed  by  St.  Peter  when  he  wrote:  "We  look  .  .  . 
for  a  new  earth  wherein  dwelleth  righteousness."  The 
men  of  Thessalonica  uttered  a  profounder  truth  than  they 
knew  when  they  complained  that  Paul  and  Silas  had 
"turned  the  world  upside  down."  The  world  of  that  day 
needed  to  be  turned  upside  down  because  it  was  wrong 
side  up. 

The  influence  of  Christian  missions  has  already  attained 
magnitude  as  one  of  the  recognized  forces  operating  in 
eastern  Asia.  The  strength  of  Christianity  in  Japan  and 
China  is  discussed  in  separate  chapters.  We  may  note  here 
that  in  1917  the  Ministry  of  the  Interior  of  the  Chinese 
Government  reported  there  were  2,717  Christian  churches 
in  China,  4,288  chapels,  8  Bible  societies,  161  missionary 
hospitals  and  medical  schools,  9  missionary  colleges,  1,171 


470  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

middle  schools,  and  2,557  primary  schools,  besides  many 
branches  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  The  report  further  showed 
that  there  were  1,836  men  and  2,716  women  missionaries, 
902  native  preachers,  8,381  native  assistant  preachers, 
1,108  native  Bible  women,  2,799  teachers  and  186,130  stu- 
dents in  the  missionary  schools,  and  388  physicians  working 
in  the  missionary  hospitals.  The  total  number  of  converts 
to  Christianity  was  placed  at  35,287,809,  this  number  in- 
cluding, of  course,  both  Protestants  and  Roman  Catholics. 

The  last  figure  is  very  much  too  high  an  estimate,  if  the 
term  "converts"  is  used  in  a  proper  sense.  But  it  is  sig- 
nificant that  to  government  officials,  Christian  churches 
look  so  large,  and  that  so  many  Chinese  are  willing  to  be 
called  Christians,  even  though  their  connection  with  the 
church  is  merely  nominal.  The  China  Continuation  Com- 
mittee reported,  in  1917,  a  Protestant  Christian  constituency 
in  China  of  595,684,  and  Les  Missions  de  Chine  et  du 
Japon  in  the  same  year  gave  the  Roman  Catholic  consti- 
tuency as  1,789,297. 

In  the  three  countries  that  are  commonly  grouped  as  the 
Far  East,  Protestant  missions  are  represented  by  7,356  for- 
eign missionaries,  21,024  native  workers,  13,678  congrega- 
tions with  698,566  communicants  and  definitely  known 
adherents,  6,214  schools  and  colleges  with  215,819  students, 
729  hospitals  and  dispensaries,  which  treated  in  a  recent 
typical  year  1,255,827  patients,  and  37  printing-presses, 
whose  annual  output  of  Bibles,  books,  tracts,  and  periodicals 
aggregates  107,700,000  pages.  The  Roman  Catholic  Mis- 
sions report  1,944,281  baptized  members,  including  children. 

This  is  really  wonderful  when  we  consider  the  compara- 
tively brief  period  in  which  missionary  work  has  been  con- 
ducted, the  difficulty  of  inducing  peoples  of  other  races  to 
change  their  hereditary  beliefs,  the  limited  resources  of  the 
mission  boards,  and  the  fact  that  they  have  had  the  support 
of  only  a  part  of  the  churches  in  Europe  and  America. 
There  are  more  Christians  in  each  one  of  the  countries  un- 
der consideration  than  there  were  in  the  Roman  Empire  a 
century  after  Pentecost.  Now  that  Christianity  has  be- 


THE   INFLUENCE  OF   CHRISTIAN   MISSIONS     471 

come  well  rooted  in  all  these  Far  Eastern  lands,  and  with 
increasingly  competent  native  as  well  as  foreign  leadership, 
rapidly  increasing  influence  may  be  reasonably  expected. 

Everywhere  Christian  missions  have  gone,  they  have  been 
a  reconstructive  force.  This  has  been  particularly  true  of 
missionary  work  in  the  Far  East. 

Missions  are  a  reconstructive  economic  force.  Others  be- 
sides missionaries  have  had  a  large  part  in  this  phase  of 
the  reconstructive  process,  but  the  missionaries  have  been 
potent  influences.  The  lamps,  kerosene  oil,  watches,  clocks, 
furnaces,  glass  windows,  sewing-machines,  and  other  conve- 
niences in  their  houses;  the  agricultural  implements  in  their 
gardens  and  machinists'  tools  in  their  industrial  schools; 
the  improved  machinery  and  methods  in  their  printing- 
presses  ;  their  explanations  of  the  steam-engine,  the  electric 
motor,  the  railway,  and  the  telegraph — these  attracted  at- 
tention and  developed  desire.  The  missionaries  sought  no 
profit  from  these  opening  markets;  but  traders  quickly 
turned  them  to  commercial  advantage  and  built  up  business 
interests  which  were  of  large  value  to  Eastern  and  Western 
nations  alike.  Said  Ex-President  William  H.  Taft,  at  a 
missionary  meeting  of  the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church: 
"You  are  pioneers  in  pushing  Christian  civilization  into  the 
Orient,  and  it  has  been  one  of  the  great  pleasures  of  my 
life  that  I  have  had  to  do  with  these  leaders  of  yours  who 
represent  your  interest  in  China,  India,  the  Philippines,  and 
in  Africa.  These  men  are  not  only  bishops  and  ministers, 
they  are  statesmen.  They  have  to  be.  They  make  their 
missions  centres  of  influence  such  as  to  attract  the  attention 
of  native  rulers.  The  statistics  of  conversions  do  not  at 
all  represent  the  enormous  good  they  are  doing  in  pushing 
Christian  standards  and  advancing  high  civilization  in  all 
these  far-distant  lands." 

Missions  are  a  reconstructive  social  force.  They  have 
effected  striking  changes  in  the  popular  attitude  toward 
woman,  in  the  status  of  the  wife,  in  the  education  of  girls,  in 
the  care  of  the  sick,  and  in  creating  a  sentiment  against 
harmful  drugs.  William  Elliot  Griffis,  who  lived  in  Japan  in 


472  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

the  old  feudal  days,  says  that  conditions  at  that  time  were 
unspeakably  bad — ignorance,  squalor,  disease,  and  im- 
morality. He  declares  that  old  Japan  had  no  principle  of 
regeneration;  and  he  quotes  approvingly  a  statement  of 
Doctor  Verbeck's  that  new  Japan  came  from  across  the  sea 
with  missionaries. 

The  defective  and  dependent  classes  were  almost  wholly 
neglected  until  the  missionaries  came  with  their  humani- 
tarian teaching  and  Christlike  ministries.  It  was  the  mis- 
sionary who  first  showed  interest  in  the  blind,  the  deaf  and 
dumb,  the  orphaned,  the  leprous,  the  sick,  and  the  insane. 
Institutions  for  their  care  are  scattered  all  over  Asia,  and 
all  of  them  were  founded  either  directly  by  missionaries  or 
indirectly  as  the  result  of  their  teachings.  The  Honorable 
V.  K.  Wellington  Koo,  Chinese  Minister  to  Washington, 
has  emphasized  "the  influence  of  the  missionaries  as  a  fac- 
tor in  the  social  regeneration  of  China.  Many  of  the 
epoch-making  reforms,  such  as  the  suppression  of  opium 
and  the  abolition  of  foot-binding,  have  been  brought  about 
with  no  little  encouragement  and  help  from  them.  In  the 
field  of  medicine  in  China,  American  missionaries  have 
rendered  important  service.  Their  hospitals  and  dispen- 
saries, nearly  four  hundred  in  all,  not  only  give  shelter, 
comfort,  and  peace  to  hundreds  of  thousands  of  the  sick 
and  suffering,  but  also  serve  as  centres  from  which  radiates 
with  increasing  luminosity  the  light  of  modern  medical 
science."1  This  testimony  is  as  applicable  to  other  lands 
as  to  China.  Professor  Nitobe,  of  the  Imperial  University 
in  Tokyo,  after  recounting  the  indebtedness  of  Japan  to 
Christianity  for  schools,  hospitals,  and  churches,  added: 
"The  leaders  of  the  campaign  to  promote  sanitation  and 
hygiene,  of  the  anti-prostitution  movement,  and  of  the 
temperance  societies  are  recruited  from  among  the  Chris- 
tians." 

Missions  are  a  reconstructive  intellectual  force.  The  mis- 
sionary has  planted  the  church  and  the  school  side  by  side. 
He  is  a  teacher  as  well  as  a  preacher.  The  first  modern 

1  Address  in  Chicago,  December  19,  1916. 


THE   INFLUENCE  OF  CHRISTIAN   MISSIONS     473 

schools  in  the  Far  East  were  founded  by  missionaries,  and 
their  present  schools  are  among  the  best  to-day.  It  is 
sometimes  said  that  modern  science  has  been  the  chief 
factor  in  the  intellectual  awakening  of  the  Far  East;  but 
it  was  the  missionary  who  first  took  modern  science  to 
those  lands,  who  translated  the  text-books,  taught  the  sci- 
ences, and  explained  the  uses  of  steam  and  electricity. 
The  Honorable  C.  T.  Wang,  Vice-President  of  the  Chinese 
Senate,  writes:  "The  mission  schools  throughout  the  coun- 
try have  led  the  way  and  in  many  cases  have  been  the 
cradle  of  the  modern  Chinese  educationalists.  In  all  the 
political  upheavals  people  have  a  good  opportunity  of 
watching  the  students  that  come  into  power.  They  find 
that  those  students  who,  through  their  touch  with  the  mis- 
sion schools  have  embraced  the  real  spirit  of  love  and  sac- 
rifice of  Jesus  Christ,  are  the  ones  that  can  best  be  trusted." l 
The  Honorable  V.  K.  Wellington  Koo,  in  the  address 
already  referred  to,  gave  emphatic  testimony  on  this  point : 
"For  the  introduction  of  modern  education  China  owes  a 
great  deal  to  American  missionaries.  It  is  a  general  con- 
viction on  the  part  of  the  Chinese  people  that  through  their 
translation  into  Chinese  of  books  on  religious  and  scien- 
tific subjects,  through  their  untiring  efforts  in  establishing 
schools  and  colleges  in  China,  and  through  their  work  as 
teachers  and  professors,  American  missionaries,  in  co-opera- 
tion with  those  from  other  countries,  have  awakened  the 
interest  of  the  Chinese  masses  in  the  value  and  importance 
of  the  new  learning.  To  a  great  extent  the  present  wide- 
spread educational  movement  in  China  is  traceable  in  its 
origin  to  the  humble  efforts  begun  a  few  decades  ago  by 
the  Christian  evangelists  from  the  West."  Substantially 
the  same  words  might  have  been  written  of  Japan.  Mis- 
sionaries were  its  first  educators,  founded  its  first  schools, 
translated  its  first  text-books,  and  compiled  its  first  gram- 
mars. In  Korea,  practically  the  entire  educational  move- 
ment of  the  country  was  organized,  directed,  and  maintained 
by  missionaries  until  recent  years.  The  governments  in 

1  Article  in  the  Missionary  Review  of  the  World,  August,  1916. 


474  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

the  Far  East  have  now  undertaken  large  educational  pro- 
grammes of  their  own,  but  their  officials  unhesitatingly  tes- 
tify that  they  were  indebted  to  missionaries  for  the  sugges- 
tion and  impetus,  for  the  best  text-books,  and  for  the  most 
highly  qualified  teachers. 

Missions  are  a  reconstructive  moral  force.  They  make 
plainer  the  distinction  between  right  and  wrong,  clarify 
conscience,  and  quicken  desire  to  do  right.  The  light  of 
Christianity  makes  virtue  appear  more  attractive  and  vice 
more  vile.  There  is  evil  in  every  land  where  Christianity 
exists;  but  it  is  there  in  spite  of  Christianity,  not  because 
of  it.  The  most  prejudiced  critic  knows  that  Christ  should 
not  be  judged  by  the  conduct  of  those  who  reject  Him,  or 
by  those  who,  while  professing  to  accept  Him,  show  by  their 
actions  that  they  have  only  partially  or  nominally  done  so. 
The  consistent  Christian  is  a  clean  man,  advocating  good, 
hating  wrong,  fighting  intemperance,  gambling,  dishonesty, 
and  the  social  evil,  purifying  the  moral  atmosphere  of  the 
community,  and  furnishing  the  type  of  reliability  that  is 
indispensable  to  the  stability  of  the  State.  The  Honorable 
S.  Shimada,  M.  P.,  of  Tokyo,  said  in  a  public  address  in 
Yokohama  that  during  the  China-Japan  War,  the  victories 
achieved  were  attended  by  disgraceful  reports  of  fraud  and 
embezzlement  on  the  part  of  the  officials  to  whom  was  in- 
trusted the  holding  and  disbursement  of  the  funds;  that  to 
obviate  such  conduct  in  the  last  war  (Russia-Japan),  Chris- 
tian men  were  selected  to  fill  such  places;  and  that  from 
the  beginning  to  the  end  the  administration  was  efficient 
and  satisfactory.1 

Bishop  Awdry,  the  English  bishop  of  South  Tokyo,  says 
that  in  the  Russia-Japan  War  the  Japanese  Government 
ruled  that  all  native  interpreters  who  accompanied  foreign 
correspondents  must  be  Christians,  and  that  this  action  was 
taken  on  the  ground  that  for  this  important  post  men  of 
absolute  reliability  were  desired,  who  would  fairly  represent 
the  interests  of  Japan.2  It  is  not  surprising  that  Sir  Ernest 

1  Reported  by  the  Reverend  H.  Loomis,  D.D.,  of  Yokohama,  in  The  Chinese 
Recorder,  March,  1907. 

1  Reported  in  The  Spirit  of  Missions,  July,  1904. 


THE   INFLUENCE  OF   CHRISTIAN   MISSIONS     475 

Satow,  for  many  years  the  British  Ambassador  to  Tokyo, 
and  a  recognized  authority  on  Japanese  matters,  said:  "In 
Japan,  Christianity  is  now  recognized  as  a  very  great  moral 
motive  in  the  national  life." 

Missions  are  a  reconstructive  political  force.  With  politics 
as  such,  missionaries  have  nothing  to  do.  They  carefully 
avoid  political  affiliations.  Mission  boards  do  not  encour- 
age appeals  to  officials  nor  do  they  seek  the  aid  of  their 
own  consular  and  diplomatic  representatives  except  in  cases 
of  urgent  need  which  involve  necessary  treaty  rights.  The 
missionaries  strongly  believe  that  all  due  respect  should  be 
paid  to  the  lawfully  constituted  civil  authorities,  that  care 
should  be  observed  not  to  embarrass  them  needlessly,  that 
the  laws  of  the  land  should  be  obeyed,  and  that  it  is  better 
for  the  followers  of  Christ  patiently  to  endure  some  in- 
justice than  to  array  the  churches  in  antagonism  to  the 
governments  under  which  they  labor. 

On  the  other  hand,  Christianity  is  always  and  everywhere 
a  reorganizing  force.  It  may  not  produce  this  result  as 
quickly  among  a  conservative  as  among  a  progressive 
people;  but  sooner  or  later,  the  consequences  are  inevitable. 
Modern  Japan  is  swiftly  in  some  respects,  and  slowly  but 
surely  in  others,  reorganizing  her  institutions  in  accordance 
with  the  new  spirit,  so  that  the  revolution  in  that  country 
is  a  comparatively  peaceful  and  normal  one,  as  it  was  in 
England.  The  ruling  classes  in  China  and  Russia,  like 
those  in  France  prior  to  the  Revolution,  shut  their  eyes  to 
the  facts  only  to  be  violently  hurled  from  power.  What  is 
happening  to  Korea  is  described  in  other  chapters.  The 
ideas  of  God,  of  man,  and  of  duty  which  Christianity  in- 
culcates invariably  effect  profound  changes  in  the  body 
politic.  They  did  this  in  Europe  and  America,  and  they 
are  doing  it  in  Asia.  Christianity  alters  a  man's  outlook, 
upon  life,  gives  him  new  conceptions  of  responsibility, 
strengthens  moral  fibre,  and  nerves  him  to  oppose  tyranny 
and  wrong.  What  Draper  said  of  Europe  may  be  said 
with  equal  truth  of  modern  Asia:  "The  civil  law  exerted 
an  exterior  power  in  human  relations;  Christianity  pro- 


476  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

duced  an  interior  and  moral  change."  The  Honorable 
Winston  Churchill  of  the  British  Government,  formerly 
Under-Secretary  for  the  Colonies,  said:  "Every  penny 
presented  to  the  cause  of  missions  is  a  contribution  to  good 
government;  every  penny  spent  on  missions  saves  the 
spending  of  pounds  in  administration;  for  missions  bring 
peace,  law,  and  order."  Similar  opinions  of  British  ad- 
ministrators in  India  have  been  widely  quoted. 

If  Asiatic  testimony  is  desired,  it  may  be  found  in  abun- 
dance. Of  the  scores  of  utterances  that  might  be  cited,  three 
may  suffice  here:  General  Li  Yuan  Hung,  the  commander- 
in-chief  of  the  Republican  Army  during  the  revolution,  and 
afterward  successor  of  Yuan  Shih  Kai  in  the  presidency: 
"Missionaries  are  our  friends.  I  am  strongly  in  favor  of 
more  missionaries  coming  to  China  to  teach  Christianity. 
We  shall  do  all  we  can  to  assist  them,  and  the  more  mission- 
aries we  get  to  come  to  China  the  greater  will  the  Republi- 
can Government  be  pleased.  China  would  not  be  aroused 
to-day  as  it  is  were  it  not  for  the  missionaries,  who  have  pen^ 
etrated  even  the  most  out-of-the-way  parts  of  the  Empire, 
and  opened  up  the  country."  The  Honorable  S.  Shimada, 
M.  P. :  "Japan's  progress  and  development  are  largely  due 
to  the  influence  of  missionaries  exerted  in  the  right  direc- 
tion when  Japan  was  first  studying  the  outer  world."  Mar- 
quis Okuma,  former  Prime  Minister:  "The  coming  of 
missionaries  to  Japan  was  the  means  of  linking  this  country 
to  the  Anglo-Saxon  spirit  to  which  the  heart  of  Japan  has 
always  responded.  The  success  of  Christian  work  in  Japan 
can  be  measured  by  the  extent  to  which  it  has  been  able 
to  infuse  the  Anglo-Saxon  and  the  Christian  spirit  into  the 
nation.  It  has  been  the  means  of  putting  into  these  fifty 
years  an  advance  equivalent  to  that  of  one  hundred  years. 
Japan  has  a  history  of  two  thousand  five  hundred  years, 
and  one  thousand  five  hundred  years  ago  had  advanced  in 
civilization  and  domestic  arts,  but  never  took  wide  views  nor 
entered  upon  wide  work.  Only  by  the  coming  of  the  West 
hi  its  missionary  representatives  and  by  the  spread  of  the 
gospel,  did  the  nation  enter  upon  world-wide  thoughts  and 


THE   INFLUENCE  OF   CHRISTIAN   MISSIONS     477 

world-wide  work.  This  is  a  great  result  of  the  Christian 
spirit."  l 

Missions  are  a  reconstructive  spiritual  force.  I  do  not 
mean  to  separate  this  phase  of  missionary  influence  from 
other  phases.  The  spiritual  motive  pervades  all  forms  of 
the  work  and  furnishes  the  mainspring  of  activity;  but 
missionaries  are  preachers  and  evangelists  above  all  else. 
They  believe  that  man's  supreme  need  is  the  quickening  of 
conscience,  the  discernment  between  right  and  wrong,  the 
clarification  of  moral  vision,  the  power  that  is  conveyed  in 
the  gospel  of  Christ.  They  have  opened  the  Bible  not 
merely  as  a  text-book  on  morals  but  as  the  revelation  of  the 
character  and  will  of  God.  They  have  presented  Christ  not 
only  as  the  best  man  that  ever  lived  but  as  the  incarnation 
of  God.  They  have  proclaimed  the  gospel  not  simply  as 
a  code  of  ethics  but  as  what  St.  Paul  declared  it  to  be: 
"the  power  of  God  unto  salvation."  They  have  gone  to 
all  classes  of  people — the  rich  and  the  poor,  the  noble  and 
the  peasant,  the  sick  and  the  sorrowing.  The  history  of 
their  labors  is  a  record  of  adventurous  expeditions,  of  pa- 
tient toil,  of  unflinching  courage,  of  uncomplaining  self- 
denial,  of  endurance  of  persecution,  and  finally  of  large 
achievement.  As  I  have  visited  the  missionaries,  travelled 
with  them,  and  watched  their  work  during  two  visits  to 
Asia,  I  have  thought  more  than  once  that  if  the  eleventh 
chapter  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  were  to  be  brought 
down  to  date,  it  would  surely  include  the  names  of  many 
of  these  men  and  women  of  whom,  like  the  Christians  of 
the  first  century,  "the  world  is  not  worthy." 

Missions  are  a  reconstructive  international  force.  "For- 
eign missions  are  influences  toward  better  world  relation- 
ships," says  ex-President  William  H.  Taft.  If  I  may  again 
quote  from  the  remarkable  address  of  the  Chinese  Minis- 
ter to  Washington:  "Even  more  significant  than  the  trade 
relations  between  our  two  countries  has  been  the  work  of 
American  missionaries  in  China,  than  whom  no  class  of 
foreigners  are  more  friendly,  sympathetic,  and  unselfish  in 

1  Japan  Daily  Mail,  October  9,  1909. 


478  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

their  attitude  toward  the  Chinese  people.  The  spirit 
which  has  underlain  and  still  underlies  the  relations  between 
China  and  the  United  States  is  nowhere  better  illustrated 
than  in  the  devotion  of  this  comparatively  small  group  of 
Americans  to  their  useful  services  in  China  and  in  their 
readiness  to  uphold  the  cause  of  justice  and  fairness.  .  .  . 
The  American  missionaries'  record  of  service  properly  de- 
serves the  gratitude  of  China  and  the  admiration  of  the 
world." 

The  reason  for  this  influence  inheres  in  the  nature  of  the 
faith  which  the  missionary  preaches.  Christianity  is  a 
world  religion.  In  this  respect  it  differs  from  other  re- 
ligions which  are  popularly  called  ethnic  or  racial.  True, 
some  of  them  have  spread  beyond  the  bounds  of  the  nations 
in  which  they  originated;  but  none  of  them  have  gone  over 
the  world,  and  none  of  them  possess  the  elements  that  would 
adapt  them  to  the  world.  Christianity  alone  has  the  stamp 
of  universality  upon  it.  Amid  a  multitude  of  tribal  and 
national  deities,  the  Old  Testament  prophets  proclaimed 
Jehovah  as  the  supernational  God,  "the  Lord  of  all  the 
earth."  The  New  Testament  writers  brought  this  world 
idea  into  special  prominence.  While  the  life  of  our  Lord 
was  confined  to  Palestine,  He  made  it  clear  that  the  scope 
of  His  purpose  was  world-wide.  He  said:  "Other  sheep  I 
have  which  are  not  of  this  fold;  them  also  I  must  bring"; 
"God  so  loved  the  world  that  He  gave  His  only  begotten 
Son  that  whosoever  believeth  in  Him  should  not  perish  but 
have  everlasting  life."  In  an  age  when  men  regarded  men 
of  other  races  as  foes,  He  said:  "Love  your  enemies."  He 
told  the  Jews  that  the  disliked  Samaritan  was  their  "neigh- 
bor." He  gave  Paul  his  commission  to  the  Gentiles.  With 
a  vision  of  the  world  He  said:  "And  I,  if  I  be  lifted  up 
from  the  earth,  will  draw  all  men  unto  Me." 

The  fundamental  ideas  of  New  Testament  teaching  are 
universals — the  world-wide  reign  of  God,  the  essential 
unity  of  the  human  race,  Christ  as  "the  propitiation  for 
our  sins  and  not  for  ours  only  but  also  for  the  sins  of  the 
whole  world,"  salvation  for  "whosoever  will,"  a  law  of 


THE   INFLUENCE   OF  CHRISTIAN   MISSIONS     479 

righteousness  which  knows  no  exemptions,  and  a  love  which 
recognizes  no  racial  or  sectarian  limits.  Universality  is  of 
the  very  essence  of  the  gospel.  Christianity  stands  or  falls 
as  a  world  faith.  It  alone  has  gone  to  every  part  of  the 
world  and  has  proved  its  adaptation  to  peoples  of  every 
race  and  clime. 

Christianity  is,  therefore,  pre-eminently  a  supernational 
religion.  We  do  not  say  international,  because  that  sug- 
gests the  plane  of  agreements  between  governments;  but 
supernational  in  that  Christianity  transcends  nations. 
There  is,  indeed,  a  proper  nationalism,  and  it  has  many 
noble  elements.  Patriotic  love  for  one's  own  country  and 
a  zeal  to  advance  its  legitimate  interests  are  great  virtues. 
Missionary  societies  are  in  warm  sympathy  with  all  true 
nationalism.  They  thoroughly  respect  the  reasonable  de- 
sire of  any  people  to  manage  their  own  affairs  unhindered 
by  unjust  interference  from  outsiders.  But  it  is  sometimes 
difficult  to  draw  the  line  between  nationalism  and  inter- 
nationalism— the  due  claims  of  a  people  to  control  their 
own  interests,  and  the  moral  obligation  to  take  into  account 
the  interests  of  humanity  at  large.  It  is  as  true  of  nations 
as  of  individuals  that  "none  of  us  liveth  to  himself."  Na- 
tionalism properly  resents  dictation  in  political  matters, 
but  it  should  welcome  unselfish  efforts  to  disseminate  those 
truths  of  medicine,  sanitation,  education,  social  justice,  and 
religion  which  are  universal  in  character,  and  which  no  na- 
tion can  exclude  without  consequences  that  are  not  only 
injurious  to  others  but  fatal  to  itself. 

The  type  of  nationalism  which  caused  the  great  war  is 
thoroughly  pagan.  It  makes  each  member  of  the  family 
of  nations  a  law  unto  itself  irrespective  of  the  rights  of  others. 
It  baptizes  national  selfishness  and  greed  as  patriotism,  and 
justifies  cruelty  and  murder  as  "military  necessity."  Said 
Lord  Hugh  Cecil,  of  the  British  Parliament:  "Nationalism, 
in  a  degree,  is  a  very  desirable  thing;  but  it  differs  from 
any  other  form  of  esprit  de  corps  in  that  it  implies  or  permits 
a  suspension  of  the  moral  law.  We  must  get  people  to  feel 
that  there  is  something  higher  than  the  loyalty  to  their 


480  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

own  country — there  is  an  obligation  to  the  interests  of  all 
mankind.  This  doctrine  is  one  of  the  most  elementary 
tenets  of  Christianity.  We  want  to  get  behind  the  idea 
that  the  higher  loyalty  is  to  our  own  country,  to  the  idea 
that  all  men  are  brethren  and  that  we  owe  to  them  a  duty 
of  inexhaustible,  immeasurable  love."  True  nationalism  is 
related  to  supernationalism  as  the  family  is  related  to  the 
community  and  the  community  to  the  state.  The  local 
duty  is  imperative,  but  it  is  consistent  with  the  duty  to  the 
larger  relationship.  President  Wilson  declared  in  a  memor- 
able address:  "The  principle  of  public  right  must  hence- 
forth take  precedence  over  the  individual  interests  of  par- 
ticular nations.  .  .  .  Always  think  first  of  humanity." 

This  is  precisely  what  Foreign  Missions  are  doing.  They 
inculcate  that  highest  type  of  loyalty  to  country,  which 
makes  it  minister  to  the  supreme  good  of  the  race.  Christi- 
anity is  the  antithesis  of  a  self -centered  nationalism.  It  sub- 
stitutes the  law  of  brotherhood  for  the  law  of  the  jungle. 
Some  have  alleged  that  Christianity  is  impracticable  as  a 
working  principle  in  social  and  national  affairs.  This  is 
what  Confucianists  assert — that  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount 
is  a  beautiful  theory,  but  that  it  cannot  be  put  into  practice 
as  Confucianism  can  be.  It  is  odd  to  hear  some  professed 
Christians  revert  to  this  non-Christian  argument.  Did 
Christ  preach  an  impracticable  gospel?  Did  He  tell  His 
followers  to  do  something  that  He  knew  they  could  not  do? 
Surely  we  must  believe  that  Christianity  is  a  religion  that 
can  be  put  into  practical  operation  in  human  affairs;  that 
the  whole  gospel  applies  to  the  whole  life;  and  that  nothing 
that  man  touches  is  beyond  the  scope  of  the  law  of  God. 

Now,  Foreign  Missions  are  the  organized  effort  of  the 
Church  of  God  to  carry  out  the  supernational  programme 
of  Christianity;  that  is,  the  dissemination  of  the  gospel 
throughout  the  world  and  the  application  of  it  to  the 
problems  of  humanity.  It  is  the  recognition  of  the  world 
mission  of  Christianity,  the  international  mind  upon  its 
highest  level,  the  emancipation  of  the  Church  from  the 
parochial  and  provincial  into  the  wide  spaces  of  the  kingdom 


THE   INFLUENCE  OF   CHRISTIAN   MISSIONS     481 

of  God.  It  teaches  that  the  world  is  one;  that  each  nation 
is  an  integral  part  of  a  common  race;  that  no  people  can 
live  an  isolated  life;  that  we  are  kin  to  our  brethren  in  other 
lands;  that  the  fatherhood  of  God  and  the  brotherhood  of 
man  include  all  mankind;  and  that  righteousness  and 
truth  should  be  supreme  everywhere. 

This  evangel  is  indispensable  to  the  peace  of  the  world. 
President  Wilson  voiced  the  common  sentiment  when  he 
disclaimed  selfish  intentions  in  the  war.  He  declared  that 
what  we  demanded  in  that  struggle  was  "nothing  peculiar 
to  ourselves.  It  is  that  the  world  be  made  fit  and  safe  to 
live  in;  and  particularly  that  it  be  made  safe  for  every  peace- 
loving  nation  which,  like  our  own,  wishes  to  live  its  own 
life,  determine  its  own  institutions,  and  be  assured  of  justice 
and  fair  dealing  by  the  peoples  of  the  world  as  against  force 
and  selfish  aggression."  This  object  rendered  imperative 
the  overthrow  of  a  Prussian  military  autocracy,  whose 
character  and  purposes  were  absolutely  incompatible  with 
these  ideals.  But  was  nothing  more  needed  than  the  over- 
throw of  that  autocracy?  Will  nations  ever  live  in  peace 
if  the  spirit  which  has  heretofore  animated  them  continues 
to  prevail  ?  Do  suspicion  plus  jealousy  equal  international 
good-will  ?  We  say  with  President  Wilson  that  we  wish  to 
"make  the  world  safe  for  democracy."  But  what  kind  of 
democracy?  Will  a  lawless,  godless  democracy  make  the 
world  safe?  On  the  contrary,  selfish  and  cruel  men  will 
fight  under  any  kind  of  government.  The  alternative  of 
autocracy  is  not  necessarily  democracy.  It  may  be  mob- 
ocracy.  Look  at  Russia.  Look  at  Mexico.  If  people  are 
too  ignorant  or  too  undisciplined  for  freedom,  the  world 
is  not  bettered  unless  the  conditions  which  make  freedom 
a  blessing  are  promptly  created. 

Many  people  appeared  to  imagine  that  the  millennium 
would  come  when  the  house  of  Hohenzollern  was  forced  to 
abdicate.  It  is  true  that  the  power  of  that  house  was  the 
greatest  hindrance  to  the  coming  of  the  better  day  for 
which  the  world  waits.  It  has  gone,  but  has  the  millennium 
come?  Did  the  exile  of  the  Czar  suffice  to  make  Russia 


482  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

an  ideal  State?  Did  the  downfall  of  the  dictator  Diaz 
usher  in  a  perfect  day  for  Mexico?  After  all  external  ob- 
stacles have  been  removed,  the  task  of  fitting  men  for  the 
right  exercise  of  liberty  remains.  It  was  Christ  Himself 
who  said:  "The  Kingdom  of  God  is  within  you."  We 
fondly  believe  that  America,  Great  Britain,  and  France  have 
learned  to  use  democracy  aright,  although  probably  few  of 
us  are  free  from  anxiety  on  this  subject.  But  assuming 
that  they  can  do  so,  we  must  remember  that  in  this  era  of 
race  solidarity  it  is  not  only  a  question  whether  they  are 
safe,  but  whether  Asia,  Africa,  and  Latin  America  are  safe. 
Does  any  one  believe  that  Colombia  and  Venezuela  are 
ready  to  help  in  creating  a  desirable  new  world  order? 
Are  China,  India,  Persia,  and  Turkey?  No  matter  how 
perfectly  we  apply  Christian  principles  to  our  own  institu- 
tions, if  we  leave  the  rest  of  the  world  out  of  account,  it  is 
vain  to  imagine  that  we  shall  escape  the  inevitable  day  of 
reckoning.  If  democracy  is  to  rule  the  world  in  righteous- 
ness, it  must  be  safe  not  only  here  but  elsewhere.  "There 
is  no  political  alchemy,"  said  Herbert  Spencer,  "by  which 
you  can  get  golden  conduct  out  of  leaden  motives."  Of 
what  avail  for  our  sons  to  die  on  the  battle-field  if  the  world 
whose  freedom  they  secure  is  unable  to  utilize  it  worthily  ? 

We  are  hearing  much  these  days  about  armies  and  navies 
and  governments  and  territorial  adjustments.  But  what 
about  the  soul  of  the  world — its  ideals,  its  aspirations,  its 
moral  principles,  that  which  differentiates  the  spiritual  from 
the  physical,  which  makes  men  sons  of  God  instead  of 
animals,  and  transmutes  hatred  into  love?  "What  shall 
it  profit"  if  we  gain  the  whole  world  of  civil  freedom  and 
physical  might,  and  lose  the  soul  of  the  world  ?  In  Foreign 
Missions  Christian  men  are  trying  to  save  the  soul  of  the 
world,  and  they  are  justified  in  magnifying  the  task  as  one 
of  the  indispensable  efforts  of  the  age. 

Since  Foreign  Missions  deals  with  supernational  ideas,  it 
is  in  a  sense  a  supernational  movement.  Of  course,  the 
individual  missionary  is  a  citizen  of  some  country,  and 
cannot  claim  supernationalism  for  himself  unless  he  accepts 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CHRISTIAN  MISSIONS     483 

the  necessary  implications  of  supernationalism.  The  coun- 
try whose  rights  of  citizenship  he  enjoys  has  rights  regard- 
ing him  and  must  hold  him  to  responsibility  for  his  acts 
and  words.  But  his  missionary  objectives  and  work  are 
supernational  and  they  distinctly  help  international  rela- 
tions. The  true  missionary  does  not  stamp  his  own  na- 
tional characteristics  upon  his  work,  but  conveys  super- 
national  ideas  of  God  and  man  and  duty,  and  leaves  the 
peoples  who  receive  them  freedom  to  organize  their  exter- 
nal forms  in  accordance  with  their  own  genius.  Represen- 
tative Asiatics  have  repeatedly  spoken  in  terms  of  warmest 
appreciation  of  the  value  of  missionary  work  from  this 
view-point.  The  late  Mr.  Fukuzawa,  of  Japan,  said:  "In 
the  early  days  of  Japanese  intercourse  with  foreigners, 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  many  serious  troubles  would 
have  occurred  had  not  the  Christian  missionary  not  only 
showed  to  the  Japanese  the  altruistic  side  of  the  Occidental 
character,  but  also  by  his  teaching  and  his  preaching  im- 
parted a  new  and  attractive  aspect  to  the  intercourse  which 
otherwise  would  have  been  masterful  and  repellent.  The 
Japanese  cannot  thank  the  missionary  too  much  for  the 
admirable  leaven  that  he  introduced  into  their  relation 
with  foreigners."1  It  would  be  easy  to  fill  pages  with  quo- 
tations to  the  same  effect.  Foreign  missionary  work  is 
more  and  more  clearly  coming  to  be  understood  as  dis- 
tinctively altruistic  in  its  character  and  aims.  Christians 
in  Western  lands  maintain  it  with  no  thought  whatever  of 
any  return  to  themselves  other  than  that  of  realizing  the 
truth  that  "it  is  more  blessed  to  give  than  to  receive." 

The  correlation  of  such  a  supernational  enterprise  to  a 
justifiable  national  spirit  involves  many  difficulties.  These 
difficulties  become  acute  when  international  relations  are 
ruptured.  But  it  is  manifestly  unjust  that  an  altruistic 
supernational  work  should  be  destroyed  by  nationalistic 
wars.  When  missionary  work  is  broken  up,  the  real  sufferer 
is  not  the  missionary,  who  usually  is  simply  returned  to 
his  own  country,  but  the  natives — the  sick  and  injured 

1  Japan  Weekly  Mail,  May  21,  1898. 


484 

turned  out  of  hospitals,  children  dismissed  from  schools, 
and  struggling  native  churches  left  without  guidance.  The 
Japanese  Government  set  a  good  example  to  all  other  na- 
tions in  the  Russia-Japan  War.  It  was  fraught  with  dire 
issues  to  Japan.  Defeat  would  have  meant  subjection  to 
a  corrupt  and  ruthless  Russian  autocracy.  But  although 
the  Russian  Church  was  a  state  church,  the  Japanese 
Government  permitted  the  Russian  missionaries  in  Japan 
to  continue  their  work  unmolested  throughout  the  war, 
because  it  realized  that  their  mission  was  conducted  from 
motives  quite  distinct  from  the  objectives  of  the  war,  and 
was  for  the  direct  benefit  of  the  Japanese  people.  Indeed, 
Count  Katsura,  then  Prime  Minister,  sent  an  official  com- 
munication to  the  representatives  of  the  Christian  Church 
in  the  Empire,  in  which  he  said  that,  anticipating  that  the 
feelings  aroused  by  the  war  might  cause  differences  be- 
tween peoples  of  different  nationalities  and  religious  beliefs, 
instruction  had  been  issued  to  local  officials  regarding  the 
protection  of  Russian  residents  and  the  members  of  the 
Russian  Church.  He  declared  that  the  need  for  this  cau- 
tion was  emphasized  by  the  fact  that  the  war  was  against 
a  professedly  Christian  nation,  and  he  hoped  that  no  one 
"will  be  betrayed  into  the  error  of  supposing  that  such 
things  as  differences  in  race  or  religion  have  anything  what- 
ever to  do  with  the  present  complication.  .  .  .  Regarding 
religion  as  an  essential  element  of  civilization,"  he  con- 
tinued, "I  have  uniformly  tried  to  treat  all  religions  with 
becoming  respect;  and  I  believe  it  to  be  an  important  duty 
of  statesmen,  under  all  circumstances,  to  do  their  utmost 
to  prevent  racial  animosities." 

Of  course,  a  government  has  the  undoubted  right  to  satisfy 
itself  regarding  the  neutral  character  of  a  missionary,  to 
watch  him  closely,  and  to  insist  that  he  shall  accept  the 
limitations  which  his  supernational  work  involves.  If  he 
violates  them,  his  punishment  should  be  as  stern  and  swift 
as  the  punishment  of  any  one  who  in  a  time  of  war  misuses 
the  privileges  accorded  him  as  a  non-combatant.  Some 
missionaries  could  not  meet  this  test,  as  experience  in  sev- 


THE   INFLUENCE   OF  CHRISTIAN   MISSIONS     485 

eral  lands  has  showed.  But  if  the  supernational  principle 
is  recognized,  it  is  comparatively  easy  to  test  individuals 
by  it  and  to  eliminate  those  who  cannot  meet  the  required 
conditions. 

The  only  hope  for  the  future  of  the  world  lies  in  the  uni- 
versal recognition  and  application  of  those  ideas  of  interna- 
tional order,  justice,  and  brotherhood  which  Christ  pro- 
claimed, and  of  which  the  foreign  missionary  enterprise  is 
the  organized  expression.  All  other  ties  snapped  in  the 
war.  Science,  philosophy,  education,  commerce — each  and 
all  failed  to  hold  the  world  together.  Labor  and  social- 
ism came  nearer  than  any  of  them  to  maintaining  a  kind 
of  unity;  but  they  too  were  soon  rent  apart.  The  home 
churches  were  as  widely  sundered  as  other  interests.  For- 
eign Missions  alone  preserved  the  international  idea.  Not 
that  missionaries  and  their  boards  were  neutral;  they  were 
not.  But  they  steadily  pressed  the  constructive  and  uni- 
fying principles  on  which  the  new  world  order  must  be  built. 
In  a  shattered  world,  Missions  represented  the  truths  that 
must  ultimately  tie  the  nations  together,  if  they  are  ever 
to  be  brought  together  at  all. 

We  asserted  with  earnestness  that  we  wanted  an  enduring 
peace  and  that  it  would  be  better  to  fight  on  until  the  in- 
dispensable factors  of  such  a  peace  could  be  secured.  But 
peace  is  not  an  end  in  itself;  it  is  a  by-product  of  righteous- 
ness. So  Isaiah  declares :  "The  work  of  righteousness  shall 
be  peace;  and  the  effect  of  righteousness  quietness  and  con- 
fidence forever."  No  political  \adjustments  between  gov- 
ernments can  create  enduring  peace  unless  they  rest  upon 
a  foundation  of  righteousness  and  good-will;  and  these  are 
precisely  the  foundations  which  the  missionary  enterprise 
is  laying.  Treaties  are  no  stronger  than  the  moral  character 
of  the  peoples  that  make  them,  and  missionary  work  makes 
moral  character.  It  is  inspiring  to  think  of  the  prophetic 
day  when  nations  shall  "beat  their  swords  into  ploughshares 
and  their  spears  into  pruning-hooks " ;  when  "nation  shall 
not  lift  up  sword  against  nation,  neither  shall  they  learn 
war  any  more."  The  prophet  intimated  that  this  day  will 


486  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

dawn  when,  and  only  when  "all  nations  shall  walk  in  His 
paths."  This  is  exactly  what  Foreign  Missions  are  attempt- 
ing to  do — lead  all  nations  to  "walk  in  His  paths."  Unless 
this  task  shall  be  achieved,  our  sons  will  have  died  on  the 
battle-field  in  vain. 

President  Wilson  evidently  feels  that  Foreign  Missions  are 
related  to  the  conditions  of  permanent  world-peace,  for  at 
a  time  when  he  was  heavily  burdened  with  the  cares  of  the 
war  and  was  summoning  the  people  of  the  United  States 
to  redouble  their  energies  in  its  prosecution,  he  said  to  a 
deputation  of  ministers:  "I  think  it  would  be  a  real  mis- 
fortune, a  misfortune  of  lasting  consequence,  if  the  mission- 
ary programme  for  the  world  should  be  interrupted.  .  .  . 
That  the  work  undertaken  should  be  continued,  and  con- 
tinued, as  far  as  possible,  at  its  full  force,  seems  to  me  of 
capital  necessity,  and  I  for  one  hope  that  there  may  be  no 
slackening  or  recession  of  any  sort."  The  special  service 
that  Foreign  Missions  can  render  in  rightly  influencing  the 
pressing  world  problems  in  eastern  Asia  was  well  expressed 
by  Viscount  James  Bryce,  when  he  said  that  the  jarring 
contact  of  many  nations  in  the  Far  East  to-day  impera- 
tively calls  for  the  strengthening  of  foreign  missionary  work, 
which,  he  declared,  must  be  the  chief  influence  in  smoothing 
that  contact,  in  allaying  irritation,  and  in  creating  those 
conditions  of  international  good-will  which  are  essential  to 
the  preservation  of  world  peace;  and  he  added:  "The  one 
sure  hope  of  a  permanent  foundation  for  world  peace  lies 
in  the  extension  throughout  the  world  of  the  principles  of 
the  Christian  gospel." 


CHAPTER  XXX 
ROMAN  CATHOLIC  MISSIONS  IN  KOREA 

THE  story  of  Roman  Catholic  missions  in  Korea  illus- 
trates both  the  merits  and  the  defects  of  the  missionary 
zeal  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church.  It  abounds  in  in- 
stances of  unselfish  devotion  and  splendid  courage,  of  sore 
hardship  and  thrilling  adventure;  and  it  also  abounds  in 
the  political  scheming  and  peculiarities  of  method  which 
have  characterized  so  much  of  Roman  Catholic  propaganda 
in  Asia. 

So  far  as  we  can  learn,  the  first  missionary  to  enter 
Korea  was  a  Portuguese  Jesuit,  Gregorio  de  Cespedes,  who 
at  the  request  of  General  Konishi  came  from  Japan  to  the 
army  at  Fusan  in  the  spring  of  1594.  He  and  a  Japanese 
convert  named  Foucan  Eion  labored  zealously  among  the 
Japanese  soldiers;  but  they  made  little  effort  to  reach  the 
Koreans,  although  some  of  the  Korean  prisoners  who  were 
sent  to  Japan  came  under  the  influence  of  the  Jesuits  there 
and  were  converted.  The  decisive  movement  that  led  to 
the  founding  of  the  mission  originated  in  China,  where  some 
of  the  Roman  Catholic  missionaries  became  interested  in 
the  Koreans  who  periodically  visited  Peking  with  tribute 
for  the  Emperor.  A  few  tracts  in  Chinese,  prepared  by 
the  Jesuit  missionaries  in  Peking,  were  brought  to  Korea 
by  a  returning  embassy,  in  1777,  and  fell  into  the  hands  of 
some  Korean  students,  chief  among  whom  was  a  young 
man  whose  name  has  been  paraphrased  as  "Stonewall." 
He  and  his  companions  were  deeply  impressed  by  the  doc- 
trines that  were  presented  in  these  tracts,  and  they  dili- 
gently studied  them.  Efforts  to  obtain  further  informa- 
tion from  Peking  were  fruitless  for  a  time;  but  in  1782 
Stonewall  went  to  Seoul,  and  the  next  year  he  found  an 
opportunity  to  send  a  letter  to  the  Roman  Catholic  bishop 

487 


488  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

at  Peking,  Alexander  de  Gorla,  by  his  friend,  Senghuni, 
the  son  of  one  of  the  members  of  an  embassy  to  Peking. 
This  friend  managed  to  deliver  the  message,  and  was  him- 
self baptized.  Returning  to  Korea,  he  brought  with  him 
a  generous  supply  of  religious  books,  tracts,  images,  cruci- 
fixes, and  pictures,  although,  so  far  as  is  known,  he  was  not 
given  the  Bible. 

Stonewall  read  the  books  and  tracts  with  avidity.  The 
number  of  those  interested  increased.  The  zealous  con- 
verts adopted  the  names  of  famous  saints,  one  calling  him- 
self Ambrose,  and  others  Augustine,  Thomas,  Paul,  Francis 
Xavier,  etc.  Stonewall  took  the  name  of  John  the  Baptist, 
and  his  friend  Senghuni  wished  to  be  known  as  Peter. 
The  new  faith  soon  began  to  attract  attention,  and  with 
attention  began  suspicion  and  enmity.  The  foreign  names 
gave  special  offense,  and  the  Christians  were  called  for- 
eigner-Koreans. Some  of  the  Korean  scholars  tried  to 
argue  the  new  converts  out  of  their  faith,  but  the  Chris- 
tians had  studied  their  books  and  tracts  to  good  effect,  and 
they  easily  held  their  ground.  One  of  the  literati  was  ap- 
parently impressed  by  the  teaching,  for  he  exclaimed: 
"This  doctrine  is  magnificent,  it  is  true,  but  it  will  bring 
sorrow  to  those  who  profess  it.  What  are  you  going  to  do 
about  it?"  A  Christian,  who  had  come  from  the  province 
of  Chung-chong,  carried  the  new  faith  to  his  home,  where 
it  soon  took  such  firm  root  that  in  the  annals  of  Roman 
Catholic  missions  this  province  figures  "as  the  nursery  of 
the  faith,"  although  in  several  of  its  towns,  particularly  in 
the  Naipo  region,  numbers  of  Christians  suffered  death. 
Another  convert  went  to  Chul-la,  where  he  preached  with 
equal  zeal.  Meantime  one  of  the  more  learned  of  the 
Christians  in  Seoul  made  copies  of  the  religious  books, 
which  thus  became  accessible  to  a  larger  number  of  be- 
lievers. 

The  authorities  now  determined  to  take  sternly  repres- 
sive measures.  Thomas  Kim  was  accused  of  destroying 
his  ancestral  tablets,  was  arrested,  put  to  torture,  and 
sent  into  exile.  In  April,  1784,  the  government  issued  a 


ROMAN  CATHOLIC   MISSIONS  IN  KOREA       489 

proclamation  against  Christianity  written  by  a  preceptor 
of  the  King.  It  warned  people  everywhere  to  have  nothing 
to  do  with  the  new  faith,  and  exhorted  families  to  disown 
relatives  who  had  adopted  it.  Under  this  heavy  pressure 
the  faith  of  several  converts,  including  Stonewall  himself, 
collapsed;  but  many  of  the  converts  remained  faithful. 
They  chose  one  of  their  number,  Francis  Xavier,  as 
bishop.  They  consecrated  others  as  priests,  and  preached 
and  baptized  with  indefatigable  zeal. 

In  1789  they  became  convinced  from  the  books  in  their 
possession  that  their  ordination  was  not  valid,  and  the 
bishop  and  priests  laid  aside  their  ecclesiastical  functions; 
but  they  went  on  with  their  work  as  laymen  with  no  cessa- 
tion of  zeal.  The  next  year  they  sent  Paul  to  Peking, 
where  the  astonished  and  gratified  priests  baptized  him  and 
explained  to  him  the  teachings  of  the  church  regarding  or- 
dination. When  he  returned  to  Korea  he  took  with  him 
the  right  to  baptize,  but  not  to  administer  the  other  sacra- 
ment. He  brought  such  glowing  accounts  of  the  beauty 
and  majesty  of  the  worship  in  the  cathedral  in  Peking  that 
the  little  band  of  converts  sent  a  letter  to  the  bishop  of 
Peking,  praying  that  an  ordained  priest  might  be  sent  to 
them.  Paul  bore  this  letter  also,  accompanying  the  Ko- 
rean embassy  to  Peking  in  September,  1790.  The  bishop 
promised  to  send  a  priest,  loaded  Paul  and  one  of  his  com- 
panions, -who  had  been  baptized  in  Peking,  with  presents 
and  sacred  vessels,  but  charged  them  that  the  worship  of 
ancestors  must  be  given  up.  This  message  brought  con- 
sternation to  the  little  company  of  Korean  Christians  who 
had  continued  to  burn  incense  before  their  ancestral  tablets 
and  shrines. 

Meantime  enemies  multiplied.  Persecution  increased. 
The  Christians  were  charged  with  filial  disrespect,  a  heinous 
crime  in  the  eyes  of  a  Korean.  A  considerable  number  of 
converts  and  adherents  renounced  their  faith,  but  others 
stood  as  firmly  as  ever.  Paul  and  Jacques  Kim  burned 
their  ancestral  tablets.  They  were  promptly  arrested  and 
ordered  to  recant.  They  might  have  saved  their  lives  by 


490  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

doing  so,  but  they  steadfastly  refused,  and  December  8, 
1791,  they  were  beheaded,  calling  upon  Jesus  and  the 
Virgin  Mary.  However  widely  one  may  differ  with  the 
Roman  Catholics  in  doctrinal  and  ecclesiastical  matters, 
he  cannot  but  admire  the  fidelity  of  these  early  Korean 
converts,  who  at  the  ages  of  thirty-three  and  forty-one,  re- 
spectively, testified  by  then*  blood  to  the  genuineness  of 
their  faith — the  first  martyrs  of  Korean  Christianity. 

Grievous  days  followed  for  the  other  Christians.  They 
were  relentlessly  hunted  down.  The  legs  of  some  were 
broken  with  clubs,  and  the  backs  of  others  were  scourged 
to  a  bloody  pulp.  Many  were  put  to  death,  and  others 
thrown  into  foul  prisons  to  die  of  hunger  or  of  their  un- 
tended  injuries.  Francis  Xavier  was  cruelly  beaten  and 
then  banished,  only  to  die  a  broken  man  before  he  reached 
the  final  place  to  which  he  was  transferred.  "Peter, 
sixty-one  years  old,  after  wearying  his  torturers  with  his 
endurance,  was  tied  round  with  a  cord,  laid  on  the  icy 
ground  at  night,  while  pails  of  water  were  poured  over 
him,  which,  freezing  as  it  fell,  covered  his  body  with  a 
shroud  of  ice.  In  this  Dantean  tomb,  the  old  martyr, 
calling  on  the  name  of  Jesus,  was  left  to  welcome  death, 
which  came  to  him  at  the  second  cock-crow  on  the  morn- 
ing of  January  29,  1793." 1  Even  this  bloody  persecution 
could  not  exterminate  the  new  faith.  By  1794  the  Roman 
Catholics  claimed  4,000  converts.  The  spread  of  Chris- 
tianity in  such  circumstances  by  the  Koreans  themselves, 
without  assistance  from  foreigners,  is  an  effective  testimony 
both  to  the  vitality  of  the  Christian  faith  and  to  the  stamina 
of  the  Korean  converts. 

The  bishop  of  Peking  had  not  forgotten  his  promise  to 
send  a  foreign  priest  as  soon  as  an  available  one  could  be 
found,  and  now  Joao  dos  Remedies,  a  Portuguese,  volun- 
teered to  go  to  Korea.  After  a  hard  and  perilous  mid- 
winter journey  of  twenty  days,  he  was  unable  to  cross  the 
border,  and  returned  to  Peking,  where  he  soon  after  died. 
Two  years  later  another  effort  was  made,  this  time  by 

1  Griffis,  Korea,  the  Hermit  Nation,  p.  352. 


ROMAN  CATHOLIC   MISSIONS  IN  KOREA       491 

Jacques  Tsiu,  a  Chinese  priest,  twenty-four  years  of  age. 
Arriving  at  the  frontier,  a  few  Christians  there  advised  him 
not  to  try  to  cross  at  once  as  the  sentinels  were  so  vigilant 
that  he  would  surely  be  caught  and  killed.  He  waited, 
therefore,  at  Shing-king  until  December  23,  1794,  when  he 
crossed  the  Yalu  River  in  the  night,  and  after  many  hard- 
ships, succeeded  in  reaching  Seoul.  He  ministered  secretly 
to  the  Christians  until  June,  when  the  enemies  of  Chris- 
tianity learned  of  his  presence.  He  was  sheltered  by  a 
noble  Korean  lady  who  had  accepted  Christianity.  Three 
Christians  were  arrested  and  commanded  to  disclose  his 
whereabouts.  When  they  courageously  refused,  their  arms 
and  legs  were  broken,  and  they  were  again  commanded  to 
reveal  the  priest's  hiding-place.  Still  their  fortitude  was 
unshaken,  and  June  18  they  were  beheaded,  and  their  bodies 
thrown  into  the  Han  River. 

The  Chinese  priest,  protected  by  the  law  which  made 
the  house  of  a  noble  secure  from  search,  managed  to  remain 
with  his  benefactress  for  three  years,  ministering  as  best  he 
could  to  the  Christians  who  secretly  came  to  him.  In 
September,  1796,  he  sent  a  letter  to  the  bishop  of  Peking 
by  two  Korean  Christians,  who  had  obtained  for  this  pur- 
pose places  as  servants  in  connection  with  an  embassy. 
In  order  to  make  sure  that  the  letter  should  reach  its  desti- 
nation, they  copied  it  on  silk  and  sewed  it  into  their  gar- 
ments. The  letter  was  safely  delivered  to  the  bishop, 
January  28,  1797.  It  urged  that  the  King  of  Portugal  be 
asked,  through  English  friends,  to  intercede  with  the  King 
of  Korea  in  behalf  of  the  Christians,  and  to  make  a  treaty 
which  would  give  greater  freedom  to  the  faith,  and  permit 
the  coming  of  foreign  priests  and  teachers.  Nothing  came 
of  the  letter;  but  the  King,  Cheng-chong,  who  had  never 
been  zealous  in  persecuting  the  Christians,  refused  to 
countenance  some  of  the  more  drastic  measures  proposed 
by  the  reactionary  nobles,  and  there  was  little  more  per- 
secution until  his  death,  in  the  year  1800.  His  son  and  suc- 
cessor, Suncho,  being  a  minor,  his  grandmother  became 
regent.  She  promptly  placed  in  power  some  of  the  most 


492  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

strenuous  haters  of  Christianity,  and  persecution  broke  out 
afresh.  The  next  year,  1801,  was  a  dark  one  for  the  Chris- 
tians. They  were  imprisoned,  scourged,  and  in  some  in- 
stances, beheaded.  The  Chinese  priest,  Jacques  Tsiu, 
proved  himself  a  hero.  Learning  that  he  had  been  pro- 
scribed by  the  government,  he  declared  that  he  would  no 
longer  imperil  his  noble  friend  by  his  presence.  Volun- 
tarily giving  himself  up,  he  was  beheaded  May  31.  He  did 
not  succeed,  however,  in  saving  the  lady  who  had  so  long 
befriended  him,  for  she  too  was  seized  and  beheaded,  leav- 
ing an  account  of  the  life  of  the  priest  written  on  one  of  the 
skirts  of  her  dress.  Four  other  Korean  women  of  high 
rank  also  were  beheaded. 

In  his  distress  and  fear  a  Christian  named  Alexander 
Wang  wrote  a  letter  to  the  bishop  of  Peking,  imploring 
him  to  "appeal  to  the  Christian  nations  of  Europe  to  send 
sixty  or  seventy  thousand  to  conquer  Korea."  The  letter 
was  discovered,  the  bearer  summarily  executed,  and  Alex- 
ander, in  spite  of  the  fact  that  he  wore  on  his  wrist  the 
crimson  silk  cord  which  testified  that  he  had  touched  the 
sacred  person  of  the  King,  was  put  to  death. 

The  King,  realizing  that  he  might  get  into  trouble  with 
China  on  account  of  the  execution  of  the  Chinese  priest, 
wrote  a  letter  to  the  Emperor  at  Peking,  humbly  explaining 
that  he  had  executed  the  priest  not  because  he  was  a  Chi- 
nese, but  because  he  was  a  teacher  of  "the  monstrous,  bar- 
barous, and  infamous  sect  of  brigands  who  live  like  brutes 
and  birds  of  the  vilest  sort,"  and  who  were  traitorously  con- 
spuing  to  bring  into  Korea  a  foreign  army  to  subjugate  it. 
The  Emperor  contented  himself  with  extorting  a  fine,  and 
the  persecution  continued.  January  25,  1802,  another 
royal  edict  against  the  Christians  was  issued,  and  the  poor 
believers  were  hunted  mercilessly  throughout  the  whole 
kingdom.  In  1811  some  of  the  sorely  beset  leaders  des- 
patched two  letters  to  the  Pope,  dated  respectively  De- 
cember 9  and  18,  imploring  him  to  send  them  help.  As 
on  an  earlier  occasion,  the  messengers  copied  the  letters 
on  silk,  sewed  them  in  their  clothing,  and  succeeded  in 


ROMAN   CATHOLIC   MISSIONS  IN   KOREA        493 

reaching  Peking,  from  which  the  letters  were  forwarded 
to  Rome.  But  the  Pope  had  troubles  of  his  own  at  that 
time,  being  a  virtual  prisoner  at  Fontainebleau,  and  help 
did  not  come.  Gradually,  however,  the  fierceness  of  the 
persecution  relaxed,  and  an  era  of  comparative  quiet  fol- 
lowed. In  1815  persecution  again  broke  out  in  Kang-wen 
and  Kiung-sang,  and  in  1826  there  was  a  short  outbreak  of 
enmity  in  Chul-la;  but  for  the  most  part  the  Christians  were 
not  seriously  molested  for  a  considerable  period. 

Doubtless  the  enmity  of  the  Korean  Government  was  in- 
fluenced to  a  considerable  extent  not  only  by  general  op- 
position to  foreign  ideas  and  by  wrath  at  the  desecration  of 
ancestral  tablets,  but  by  the  fear  that  the  new  faith  was 
politically  revolutionary.  The  converts  gave  some  ground 
for  this  charge.  The  Peking  priests  had  told  them  of  the 
supreme  sovereignty  of  the  Pope.  They  believed  and  acted 
in  accordance  with  their  belief.  "Seeing  the  Pope's  politi- 
cal power  upheld  by  the  powerful  European  nations  then 
under  Bourbon  rule,  the  Korean  Christians,  following  the 
ethics  of  their  teachers,  played  the  part  of  traitors  to  their 
country;  they  not  only  deceived  the  magistrates  and  vio- 
lated their  country's  laws  but,  as  the  letter  of  Alexander 
Wang  shows,  actually  invited  armed  invasion.  Hence,  from 
the  first  Christianity  was  associated  in  patriotic  minds  with 
treason  and  robbery.  The  French  missionary  as  the  fore- 
runner of  the  French  soldier  and  invader,  the  priest  as  the 
pilot  of  the  gunboat,  were  not  mere  imaginings  but,  as 
the  subsequent  narrative  shows,  strict  logic  and  actual 
fact.  It  is  the  narrative  of  friends,  not  foes,  that  later 
shows  us  a  bishop  acting  as  spy  and  pilot  on  a  French  man- 
of-war,  a  priest  as  guide  to  a  buccaneering  raid,  and,  after 
the  story  of  papal  Christianity,  the  inevitable  French  ex- 
pedition!"1 

Though  several  representations  had  been  sent  to  the 
Pope  regarding  the  struggling  church  in  Korea,  the  troubled 
conditions  in  Europe  delayed  action.  When  the  skies 
finally  cleared,  Korea  was  remembered  and  given  separate 

1  Griffis,  p.  360. 


494  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

status  as  a  mission,  under  the  care  of  the  Paris  Society, 
and  in  1832  Barthe'lemy  Brugiere,  at  that  time  a  missionary 
in  Bangkok,  Siam,  was  appointed  Apostolic  Vicar  of  Korea. 
He  started  with  the  zeal  of  a  volunteer,  but  he  never 
reached  his  field,  dying  at  Shing-king,  October  20,  1835. 
His  place  was  taken  by  Pierre  Philibert  Maubant,  who, 
accompanied  by  five  Korean  Christians,  crossed  the  Yalu 
River  on  the  ice  in  the  following  winter  (1836),  and,  finding 
sentinels  guarding  every  gate  of  Wiju,  they  crawled  on  their 
hands  and  knees  through  a  sewer-drain  into  the  city.  After 
having  been  secretly  warmed  and  fed  by  a  few  Christians 
there,  they  crawled  out  by  the  malodorous  channel  and 
made  their  way  through  the  country  to  Seoul,  suffering 
great  hardships  from  exposure  in  the  bitter  cold.  In  the 
winter  of  1837  Maubant  was  joined  by  Jacques  Honore" 
Chastan,  who,  on  January  17,  had  succeeded  in  passing 
Wiju  in  the  disguise  of  a  Korean  mourner.  December  19, 
1838,  Bishop  Laurent  Marie-Joseph  Imbert  arrived.  Under 
the  vigorous  leadership  of  these  three  priests  the  mission 
work  took  on  new  life. 

The  most  pronounced  opponent  of  Rome  cannot  justly 
withhold  the  meed  of  praise  from  those  pioneer  priests. 
They  suffered  almost  everything  that  mortal  man  could 
endure  in  order  to  reach  their  fields.  They  braved  innumer- 
able perils,  tramped  weary  days  through  the  snows  of  the 
mountains,  buffeted  the  icy  floods  of  the  rivers,  slept  in 
wretched  vermin-infested  huts,  ate  the  coarsest  food,  and 
had  no  one  to  care  for  them  in  illness  or  accident.  They 
were  hunted  by  their  enemies  as  mercilessly  as  wild  beasts, 
living  face  to  face  with  death  and  knowing  that  at  any  mo- 
ment they  were  liable  to  discovery,  to  cruel  torture,  and  to 
frightful  mutilation.  Yet  their  zeal  never  flagged. 

The  mission  work  now  prospered,  and  by  1838  there  were 
9,000  Korean  Christians.  By  January  16,  1839,  the  fac- 
tion that  was  most  bitterly  opposed  to  Christianity  gained 
the  ascendancy  at  court,  and  a  furious  persecution  began. 
The  regent  who,  during  the  minority  of  the  King,  was  gov- 
erning the  country,  had  not  been  disposed  to  persecute  the 


ROMAN  CATHOLIC  MISSIONS  IN  KOREA       495 

Christians,  but  he  was  growing  old  and  feeble,  and  the 
persecutors  began  to  have  their  way.  July  7,  1839,  the 
Ring's  uncle,  one  of  the  most  relentless  enemies  of  the 
Christians,  had  a  decree  issued  ordering  the  severest  pun- 
ishment of  all  persons  who  adhered  to  the  Christian  faith. 
Three  of  the  most  influential  Korean  Christians  and  a 
number  of  women  and  children  were  immediately  executed. 
Then  Bishop  Imbert  showed  a  sublime  devotion.  Believing 
that  the  persecution  was  primarily  directed  against  himself 
as  the  head  of  the  Christians,  and  hoping  that  if  he  gave 
himself  up  his  poor  followers  might  be  spared,  he  volun- 
tarily surrendered  himself  August  10,  and  directed  his  priests, 
Maubant  and  Chastan,  to  follow  his  example.  They 
promptly  and  gladly  obeyed.  But  the  hard  hearts  of  their 
foes  were  not  touched  by  this  instance  of  noble  self-sacrifice. 
The  three  devoted  priests  were  beaten  with  the  paddle 
until  their  flesh  was  terribly  mangled,  and  September  21, 
1839,  they  were  executed.  Seventy  of  the  Korean  Chris- 
tians were  beheaded  at  the  same  time,  and  sixty  others  were 
strangled  or  died  from  tortures. 

Deprived  of  their  leaders  by  this  tragedy,  hated  and  pur- 
sued of  all  men,  the  Christians  suffered  much.  It  is  ir- 
refragable evidence  of  the  genuineness  of  their  faith  that 
all  did  not  recant.  Some  did,  as  might  be  expected,  but 
the  majority  remained  faithful. 

Nor  were  there  wanting  priests  to  take  the  places  of  the 
fallen.  December  31,  1843,  Jean^Joseph  Ferre"ol  was  made 
Bishop  of  Korea.  Having  heard  so  much  of  the  difficulty 
of  entering  the  country  at  Wiju,  he  sent  a  trusty  Korean, 
Andrew  Kim,  to  see  if  an  entrance  could  not  be  effected  at 
Hun-chun.  After  a  painful  journey  of  a  month  through 
the  deep  snow  of  the  mountains,  Kim  reached  Hun-chun 
February  25,  1844.  Crossing  the  Tumen  on  the  ice,  he 
conferred  with  a  little  party  of  Christians  who,  by  previous 
arrangement,  had  assembled  at  Kion-wen,  a  town  not  far 
from  Hun-chun,  on  a  tributary  of  the  Tumen.  All  agreed 
that  the  difficulty  and  danger  of  entering  Korea  by  that 
route  were  greater  than  at  Wiju.  Kim  therefore  rejoined 


496  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

the  bishop,  who  sought  to  come  in  at  the  Border  Gate. 
Finding  that  the  vigilant  guards  examined  every  traveller, 
and  that  it  would  be  well-nigh  impossible  for  a  white  man 
to  pass  them  without  discovery,  the  bishop  ordered  Kim 
to  go  on  alone,  while  he  gave  up  the  attempt  and  went  to 
Macao. 

Andrew  Kim  showed  himself  to  be  a  remarkable  man. 
As  soon  as  possible  after  reaching  Seoul,  January  8,  1845, 
he  "collected  a  crew  of  eleven  fellow-believers,  only  four 
of  whom  had  ever  seen  the  sea  and  none  of  whom  knew 
their  destination,  and,  equipped  with  but  a  single  compass, 
put  to  sea  in  a  rude  fishing-boat,  April  24,  1845.  Despite 
the  storms  and  baffling  winds,  this  uncouth  mass  of  fire- 
wood, which  the  Chinese  sailors  jeeringly  dubbed  The  Shoe, 
reached  Shanghai  in  June.  Andrew  Kim,  never  before  at 
sea  except  as  a  passenger,  had  brought  this  uncaulked, 
deckless,  and  unseaworthy  scow  across  the  entire  breadth 
of  the  Yellow  Sea."1  He  certainly  deserves  a  prominent 
place  in  the  history  of  adventurous  daring  in  missionary 
annals.  At  Shanghai  Kim  was  joined  by  Bishop  Ferr£ol, 
and  August  17  he  received  the  formal  ordination  to  the 
priesthood,  which  was  soon  to  be  followed  by  his  martyr- 
dom. September  1  the  bishop  sailed  with  another  French 
priest,  Marie  Antoine  Nicholas  Daveluy,  and  on  the  night 
of  October  12  succeeded  in  making  a  landing  unobserved 
on  the  coast  of  Korea. 

Fourteen  years  later,  in  1859,  the  Roman  Catholic  con- 
verts were  said  to  number  17,000.  The  roll  continued  to 
lengthen  until  the  brutal,  fanatical  Tai-wen-kun  began 
what  he  designed  to  be  a  war  of  extermination.  Multi- 
tudes of  Christians  laid  down  their  lives  during  those  awful 
days.  The  French  Government  tried  to  send  relief  in  the 
expedition  of  1866;  but  the  effort  failed,  and  the  persecu- 
tion continued  with  such  fury  that  by  the  year  1870,  it  was 
believed  that  8,000  Korean  Christians  had  been  slaughtered. 
Fierce  were  the  fires  of  persecution  that  raged  about  the 
devoted  men  and  women  who  accepted  the  Christian  faith 

1  Griffis,  pp.  365-366. 


ROMAN   CATHOLIC   MISSIONS   IN  KOREA        497 

in  the  years  that  preceded  the  opening  of  Korea  to  the 
influences  of  the  modern  world.1 

With  the  end  of  the  regency  and  the  accession  of  the 
King  better  days  dawned.  Christians  were  still  perse- 
cuted, but  the  King  lacked  both  the  vigor  and  the  fanati- 
cism of  the  Tai-wen-kun.  Since  then,  progress  has  been 
fairly  steady,  and  in  some  years  rapid.  In  1909,  the  bishop 
told  me  that  the  Roman  Catholic  population  in  Korea  was 
then  42,441.  The  Roman  Catholic  constituency  is  now 
given  as  87,270,  a  gain  of  more  than  100  per  cent  in  a 
decade. 

The  Roman  Catholic  cathedral  in  Seoul  occupies  a  com- 
manding site  on  high  ground,  and  is  the  most  conspicuous 
building  in  the  city.  It  was  an  eyesore  to  the  Korean  Em- 
peror and  to  his  loyal  subjects,  for  it  was  deemed  discourte- 
ous, a  kind  of  lese-majeste,  for  any  one  to  erect  a  building 
that  could  look  down  on  the  imperial  palace.  The  Koreans 
made  strenuous  objection  to  this  site  for  the  cathedral,  as 
the  eminence  on  which  it  stands  commands  not  only  the 
palace,  but  practically  the  whole  city.  But  the  Roman 
Catholics,  with  the  powerful  backing  of  the  French  legation, 
refused  to  yield. 

The  bishop  at  the  time  of  my  visit  impressed  me  as  a 
very  intelligent  man.  He  had  a  fine,  expressive  face,  and  a 
cultivated  manner.  The  Protestant  missionaries  said  that 
he  had  an  unsurpassed  knowledge  of  the  Korean  language 
and  literature,  and  they  deeply  regretted  his  death  some 
years  later.  The  priests  that  I  saw  were,  with  some  nota- 
ble exceptions,  evidently  from  the  peasant  class — faithful, 
industrious,  and  intensely  devoted  to  their  church,  but  not 
men  of  special  education  or  refinement.  They  are,  of  course, 
celibates,  and  a  prominent  priest  told  me  that  candidates 
for  the  foreign  priesthood  are  not  accepted  if  they  have 
dependent  relatives.  Accustomed  from  their  earliest  years 
to  a  very  simple  scale  of  living,  they  can  reside  in  communi- 
ties and  on  a  much  smaller  sum  than  Protestant  mission- 

1  Cf.  Griff  is,  pp.  347-376,  and  the  sources  in  the  account  of  Dallet,  the 
Roman  Catholic  annalist. 


498  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

aries,  who  as  a  rule  represent  the  best  type  of  British  and 
American  college  and  university  trained  men.  With  wife 
and  children,  the  Protestant  missionary  requires  a  separate 
house,  and  the  wives  and  single  women  of  the  mission  are 
also,  as  a  rule,  college  graduates.  While  the  Roman  Catholic 
missionary  does  not  receive  a  salary  like  the  Protestant 
missionary,  the  order  to  which  he  belongs  provides  his 
room,  food,  and  clothing,  and  makes  modest  allowances  for 
other  needs.  With  no  one  dependent  upon  him,  no  chil- 
dren to  care  for  and  educate,  he  is  about  as  comfortably 
off  as  other  missionaries,  all  things  considered.  His  life, 
however,  is  a  narrower  one,  as  his  ability  to  buy  books  and 
periodicals  is  small,  and  as  he  is  seldom  permitted  to  return 
on  a  furlough  to  his  native  land.  When  he  goes  to  his 
field,  he  goes  to  stay;  and  unless  he  is  so  fortunate  as  to 
be  sent  home  on  some  rare  mission,  he  spends  his  life  in 
Korea;  perhaps  in  a  city  like  Seoul,  with  its  social  and  in- 
tellectual advantages,  but  more  probably  in  some  lonely 
station  where  he  has  few  or  no  companionships  of  his  own 
race. 

There  is  much  in  the  Roman  Catholic  doctrinal  teaching 
and  missionary  method  with  which  I  do  not  sympathize; 
but  the  discussion  of  such  matters  would  lie  outside  the 
scope  of  this  book.  I  am  heartily  glad  to  pay  my  humble 
tribute  of  praise  to  the  courage  and  self-sacrifice  that  have 
so  signally  marked  the  history  of  Roman  Catholic  missions 
in  Korea.  Readers  who  wish  to  go  more  fully  into  the 
story  will  find  ample  material  in  publications  of  the  Church, 
and  in  William  Elliot  Griffis's  Korea,  the  Hermit  Nation,  to 
which  I  have  frequently  referred.  I  am  glad  also  to  be 
able  to  record  that  I  have  never  heard  of  the  moral  delin- 
quencies of  priests  in  Korea  of  which  I  felt  obliged  to  write 
so  plainly  in  my  book  on  the  Philippines,  and  which  have 
long  been  notorious  among  the  clergy  in  many  parts  of 
Mexico,  Central  and  South  America.  The  typical  Roman 
Catholic  priest  in  Korea,  like  his  brother  in  France,  differs 
widely  in  many  respects  from  an  Anglican,  Congregational, 
or  Presbyterian  clergyman,  but  he  is  a  man  whose  mis- 


ROMAN  CATHOLIC  MISSIONS  IN  KOREA        499 

sionary  ardor  and  devotion  are  undoubted.  As  for  the 
Korean  converts,  their  standards  are  very  different  from 
ours;  but  members  and  priests  alike  can  point  to  a  history 
which  leads  one  to  say  with  Lord  Curzon  that  "the  infant 
Korean  church  has  shown  a  heroism,  has  endured  suffer- 
ings, and  has  produced  a  martyr-roll  that  will  compare 
favorably  with  the  missionary  annals  of  less  obscure  coun- 
tries and  more  forward  peoples."1 

1  Probkms  of  the  Fear  East,  p.  183. 


CHAPTER  XXXI 
PROTESTANT  MISSIONS  IN  KOREA 

A  GENERATION  ago  few  students  of  the  non-Christian 
world  would  have  selected  Korea  as  a  missionary  field  of 
strategic  importance.  What  was  there  except  human 
misery  to  attract  men  of  the  West  to  this  small  and  weak 
country,  with  its  slovenly,  indolent,  and  apathetic  people? 
Did  the  first  missionaries  and  their  supporters  see  the  gold 
in  the  dirt  of  Korean  character  when  they  began  the  work 
in  this  distant  and  then  little-known  land?  It  may  have 
been,  for  they  were  far-seeing  men.  More  probably  they 
were  prompted  by  that  spirit  which  impels  the  true  dis- 
ciple of  the  Master  to  stretch  out  the  uplifting  hand  to 
those  who  are  farthest  out  and  lowest  down.  Korea  was 
a  land  which  needed  spiritual  help  and  there  were  mission- 
aries ready  to  go;  this  was  enough. 

The  first  Protestant  missionary  visitor  was  the  Reverend 
Charles  Gutzlaff,  a  Prussian,  representing  the  Netherlands 
Missionary  Society,  who  arrived  in  Korea  July  17,  1832,  on 
an  East  India  Company's  ship  commanded  by  Lord  Am- 
herst.  He  spent  a  month  in  Chul-la,  distributing  books 
and  medicines,  and  teaching  the  people  how  to  cultivate 
potatoes.  Presents,  including  the  Bible,  were  sent  to  the 
royal  palace,  but  the  King  refused  to  receive  them.  Gutz- 
laff's  knowledge  of  Chinese  enabled  him  to  make  many 
inquiries  and  to  gather  considerable  information;  but  his 
stay  was  too  brief  to  produce  permanent  effect.  The  next 
missionary  visitor  was  a  Scotchman,  the  Reverend  John 
Ross,  of  Manchuria,  who  in  1873  made  a  tour  across  the 
border  and  studied  the  language  to  such  effect  that  he  was 
subsequently  able  to  translate  the  New  Testament  into 
Korean. 

Permanent  mission  work  did  not  begin  till  the  treaty  of 
May  22,  1883,  had  brought  Korea  to  the  attention  of  the 

500 


PROTESTANT  MISSIONS  IN  KOREA  501 

outside  world.  Horace  N.  Allen,  M.D.,  a  Presbyterian 
medical  missionary  in  China,  learned  during  a  temporary- 
stay  in  Shanghai  that  a  physician  was  needed  by  the  for- 
eign community  in  Seoul.  In  consultation  with  the  Rev- 
erend William  S.  Holt,  a  missionary  in  whose  house  he  and 
Mrs.  Allen  were  staying,  it  was  agreed  that  Doctor  Allen 
should  make  a  preliminary  trip  of  inquiry  to  Seoul,  and 
that  Mr.  Holt  should  write  to  the  Presbyterian  Board  in 
New  York,  suggesting  that  the  time  had  come  to  open 
missionary  work  in  Korea,  and  that  Allen  be  assigned  for 
this  purpose.  Meantime,  Mr.  Daniel  W.  McWilliams,  of 
Brooklyn,  New  York,  read  an  article  in  a  newspaper  advis- 
ing against  the  sending  of  missionaries  to  the  newly  opened 
country  lest  they  cause  a  reaction.  Mr.  McWilliams  had 
a  better  appreciation  of  the  influence  of  missionaries,  and 
in  February,  1884,  he  offered  $5,000  to  the  Presbyterian 
Board  of  Foreign  Missions  for  this  purpose,  out  of  the  sum 
received  by  him  from  the  estate  of  Mr.  Frederick  Mar- 
quand.  The  gift  was  accepted,  and  a  cable  sped  to  Shanghai 
bearing  the  words:  "Allen,  Korea."  Except  for  the  tem- 
porary visit  of  Doctor  Ross  eleven  years  earlier,  "this  cable- 
gram was  the  first  voice  from  Protestant  Christendom  to 
molest  the  age-old  heathenism  of  Korea.  It  was  destined 
to  wake  the  echoes  from  end  to  end  of  the  kingdom."  Mr. 
Holt  forwarded  the  message  to  Doctor  Allen,  who  promptly 
returned  to  Shanghai  for  his  family  and  went  back  to  Seoul, 
arriving  September  20,  1884. 

The  memory  of  some  experiences  with  Roman  Catholic 
missionaries  in  former  years  and  reports  of  what  had  oc- 
curred in  China  did  not  incline  the  Korean  officials  to  wel- 
come any  more  missionaries.  However,  the  government 
did  not  oppose  Doctor  Allen,  although  some  of  the  foreign- 
ers in  Seoul,  and  particularly  a  German  who  was  then  ad- 
vising the  government,  strengthened  suspicion  and  prejudice. 
Fortunately,  the  need  of  a  physician  in  the  foreign  com- 
munity was  great.  The  American  Legation  also  needed  a 
physician,  and  the  American  Minister,  General  Lucius  H. 
Foote,  appointed  Doctor  Allen  surgeon  to  the  Legation. 


502  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

This  appointment  gave  him  a  standing,  and  he  soon  made 
his  way  to  favor. 

December  4,  a  banquet  was  given  at  the  royal  palace  to 
celebrate  the  opening  of  the  first  Korean  post-office.  An 
enemy  of  the  party  in  power,  Kim  Ok  Kiun,  took  advan- 
tage of  the  opportunity  to  attempt  a  revolution.  In  the 
tumult  several  high  officers  were  assassinated,  and  Prince 
Min  Yong  Ik,  a  nephew  of  the  King,  who  had  headed  the 
embassy  to  the  United  States  the  preceding  year,  was 
badly  wounded.  Frightened  people  scurried  to  cover,  but 
the  missionary  bravely  made  his  way  to  the  palace  and  of- 
fered to  help  the  wounded.  He  found  thirteen  native 
physicians  excitedly  crowding  about  the  Prince,  and  about 
to  pour  boiling  wax  into  his  gaping  wounds.  He  tactfully 
persuaded  them  to  allow  him  to  dress  the  injuries,  and  for 
the  first  time  the  court  saw  a  modern  surgeon  at  his  skilful 
work. 

Days  of  violence  followed  in  the  city.  The  Japanese 
Legation,  the  post-office,  and  the  residences  of  foreigners 
were  looted,  and  on  the  10th  the  American  Minister,  the 
British  and  German  Consuls-General,  and  all  the  other  for- 
eigners in  Seoul,  except  Doctor  and  Mrs.  Allen,  fled  to 
Chemulpo.  The  heroic  missionary  and  his  wife  refused  to 
abandon  their  posts.  Doctor  Allen  wrote:  "We  couldn't 
if  we  would,  and  we  wouldn't  if  we  could.  I  came  to  do 
just  such  work.  I  can't  leave  these  wounded  people.  .  .  . 
We  shall  live  in  the  Legation  with  the  old  flag  flying,  and 
trust  the  kind  Father  to  care  for  us." 

Ere  long,  to  the  surprise  of  every  one,  the  Prince  recov- 
ered, and  Doctor  Allen  became  the  most  famous  man  in 
the  capital.  The  grateful  King  became  his  friend,  and 
February  25,  1885,  a  government  hospital  was  opened  un- 
der royal  patronage,  with  the  missionary  in  full  charge. 
The  King  himself  named  it  Hoy  Min  So,  the  House  of  Civil- 
ized Virtue.  The  forty  beds  were  quickly  filled,  and  within 
the  first  year  10,000  patients  were  treated  in  the  hospital 
and  its  dispensary.  In  this  beneficent  way,  Christian  work 
obtained  a  foothold.  April  5,  1885,  the  first  resident  or- 


PROTESTANT  MISSIONS  IN  KOREA  503 

dained  missionary  arrived,  the  Reverend  Horace  G.  Under- 
wood, also  a  Presbyterian,  and  he  speedily  became  a  tower 
of  strength  to  the  infant  mission.  June  21,  J.  W.  Heron, 
M.D.,  was  added  to  the  little  company. 

Meantime,  the  attention  of  the  Board  of  Missions  of  the 
Methodist  Episcopal  Church  had  been  directed  to  the  coun- 
try by  the  Reverend  John  F.  Goucher,  D.D.,  of  Baltimore. 
During  a  trip  across  the  continent  in  1883  he  had  met  the 
first  Korean  Embassy  on  its  way  to  Washington,  formed  a 
personal  acquaintance  with  its  leader,  Prince  Min  Yong  Ik, 
and  invited  him  and  several  of  his  official  associates  to  visit 
his  home  in  Baltimore.  He  was  so  much  interested  that  he 
wrote  to  the  Reverend  Robert  S.  Maclay,  D.D.,  superin- 
tendent of  the  Methodist  missions  in  Japan,  suggesting 
that  he  visit  Korea  and  report  upon  its  possibilities  as  a 
mission  field.  Doctor  and  Mrs.  Maclay  made  the  desired 
visit  in  June,  1884.  They  met  with  small  encouragement, 
but  they  sent  back  such  an  account  of  the  need  that  Doctor 
Goucher  was  confirmed  in  his  first  impressions  as  to  the 
importance  of  the  field.  He  had  already  offered  $2,000  for 
the  opening  of  this  work.  To  this  sum  the  Board  added 
$2,000,  and  in  the  latter  part  of  the  year  1884,  the  Reverend 
H.  G.  Appenzeller,  William  B.  Scranton,  M.D.,  and  his 
mother,  Mrs.  M.  F.  Scranton,  were  appointed  the  first 
Methodist  missionaries  to  Korea.  They  were  delayed  by 
the  December  revolution,  but  Mr.  Appenzeller  arrived 
at  Chemulpo,  Easter  Sunday,  April  5,  1885,  and  Doctor 
Scranton  the  third  of  the  following  May.  Both  men  de- 
veloped qualities  of  leadership  and  soon  became  influential, 
while  Mrs.  Scranton  became  a  power  for  good  in  connec- 
tion with  the  Ewha  School  for  Girls,  in  Seoul. 

July  5,  1886,  a  trained  nurse  and  medical  student,  Miss 
Annie  Ellers,  a  Presbyterian,  arrived.  She  became  physi- 
cian to  the  Queen,  and  swung  the  door  of  royal  favor 
more  widely  open.  The  first  graduate  physician  to  arrive 
was  Miss  Meta  Howard,  M.D.,  who  joined  the  Methodist 
mission  in  1887,  and  opened  the  first  hospital  for  women 
in  the  spring  of  the  following  year.  After  Miss  Eller's 


504  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

marriage  to  Mr.  Dalzel  A.  Bunker,  who  entered  the  Metho- 
dist mission,  she  was  succeeded  as  physician  to  the  Queen 
by  Miss  Lillias  Horton,  M.D.,  later  Mrs.  Underwood,  an- 
other Presbyterian,  who  arrived  in  1888,  and  by  her  skill 
and  tact  gained  great  influence  at  the  palace. 

The  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel,  of  the 
Church  of  England,  as  early  as  1880  had  received  a  sug- 
gestion from  the  Reverend  A.  C.  Shaw,  one  of  its  mission- 
aries in  Japan,  regarding  the  founding  of  a  mission  in  Korea. 
This  suggestion  was  reinforced  in  1887  by  Bishops  Scott  of 
North  China  and  Bickerstaph  of  Japan,  who  visited  Korea 
in  that  year.  The  society  did  not  find  it  practicable  to 
open  work  at  once,  but  on  All  Saints'  Day,  1889,  the  Right 
Reverend  Charles  John  Corfe,  D.D.,  was  consecrated  the 
first  missionary  bishop  of  Korea  in  Westminster  Abbey, 
and  he  reached  the  field  September  29,  1890,  with  six  or- 
dained men  and  two  physicians.  Property  was  acquired 
at  Seoul  and  Chemulpo  and  work  begun.  September  30, 
1891,  the  first  Anglican  church  in  Korea  was  dedicated  at 
Chemulpo,  and  on  the  following  Sunday  the  first  confirma- 
tion was  held,  "the  first  candidate  being  a  little  serving- 
maid  of  a  pious  German  family."  Later,  the  island  of 
Kang-wa  off  the  west  coast  attracted  the  missionaries,  and 
they  founded  work  there  as  well  as  on  the  mainland.  The 
resignation  of  Bishop  Corfe  was  followed  by  the  election 
of  Bishop  H.  B.  Turner,  in  1905.  After  his  lamented  death 
in  1911,  Bishop  M.  N.  Trollope  took  charge  of  the  diocese. 
In  September,  1906,  the  Reverend  S.  H.  Cartwright,  of  the 
Japan  mission,  began  a  special  work  among  the  Japanese 
in  Korea,  making  Seoul  his  headquarters.  The  society  is 
now  represented  in  Korea  by  twenty-seven  missionaries. 

The  mission  of  the  Southern  Presbyterian  Church  (Amer- 
ican) was  established  in  1892,  when  six  missionaries  arrived. 
They  began  their  work  in  Seoul,  but  later  removed  to  the 
two  Chul-la  provinces  in  the  southwestern  part  of  Korea, 
where  they  began  an  effective  work  from  the  three  central 
cities  of  Kwanju,  Chungju,  and  Kunsan.  The  Presbyterians 
of  Australia  opened  a  station  at  Fusan,  in  1889,  their  pioneer 


PROTESTANT  MISSIONS  IN  KOREA  505 

missionaries  being  the  Reverend  John  H.  Davies  and  his 
sister.  Canadian  Presbyterians  were  first  interested  in 
Korea  by  the  devoted  W.  J.  McKenzie,  who  went  to  Korea 
in  1893  under  the  support  of  his  university,  and  whose  sad 
death  two  years  later  touched  all  hearts.  It  was  not  until 
1897  that  the  General  Assembly  felt  that  the  way  was  clear 
to  found  a  mission.  September  8  of  the  following  year 
three  missionaries  reached  Seoul,  and  after  consultation 
with  the  Council  of  Missions,  the  province  of  Hamgyondo, 
on  the  northeast  coast,  was  agreed  upon  as  the  field  of  the 
Canadian  Presbyterians. 

The  work  of  the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church  South 
originated  in  1895,  when  Bishop  E.  R.  Hendrix  and  the 
Reverend  C.  F.  Reed  visited  Korea,  the  mission  being 
formally  opened  the  following  year.  Stations  were  estab- 
lished at  such  strategic  centres  as  Seoul,  Gensan,  and 
Songdo. 

The  beginnings  of  the  work  of  the  Young  Men's  Chris- 
tian Association  were  made  in  1901,  when  Mr.  Phillip  L. 
Gillett  arrived  in  Seoul.  He  started  with  Bible  classes  for 
English-speaking  Koreans  and  Japanese,  and  October  27, 
1903,  he  was  able  to  organize  a  City  Association,  with  an 
influential  board  of  directors,  and  on  the  same  day  a  Student 
Association  in  the  Methodist  Boys'  School.  The  British 
and  Foreign  Bible  Society,  the  American  Bible  Society,  and 
the  National  Bible  Society  of  Scotland  also  arrived  early 
on  the  field  and  effectively  co-operated  with  all  the  missions 
in  printing  and  distributing  the  Bible. 

Thus  the  foundations  were  laid  by  brave  and  tireless 
pioneer  missionaries,  who  had  painful  reason  to  know  the 
difficulties  of  the  field.  The  diary  of  Doctor  Allen  includes 
the  following  entry  for  October  11,  1885:  "To-day  we  cele- 
brated the  first  Protestant  communion  service  in  Korea.  .  .  . 
The  service  was  impressive  and  productive  of  good.  We 
used  an  old  silver  teapot  given  me  by  my  mother,  and  one 
of  our  glass  goblets.  Mr.  Loomis  (of  Japan)  preached." 
No  Korean  name  appears  in  the  list  of  twelve  persons  pres- 
ent, including  three  American  naval  officers. 


506  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

Progress  was  slow  for  several  years.  Missionaries  were 
endeavoring  to  communicate  totally  new  ideas  to  a  people 
who  had  been  made  sodden  and  apathetic  by  an  inheritance 
of  centuries  of  rank  heathenism.  It  is  difficult  for  Ameri- 
cans, who  have  been  familiar  with  the  gospel  from  infancy, 
to  realize  how  hard  it  is  for  the  people  of  the  Far  East  to 
understand  the  new  conceptions  which  Christianity  incul- 
cates. We  need  to  remember  that  our  own  ancestors  were 
slow  in  understanding  them,  and  that  centuries  passed 
before  Christianity  was  apprehended  even  by  Anglo-Saxons. 
It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that  the  superstition-clouded 
Korean  listened  dully  and  thought  the  missionary  "a 
setter  forth  of  strange  gods."  If  the  intellectual  Athenians 
mocked  St.  Paul  when  he  preached  to  them  Christ  and 
the  resurrection,  what  could  be  expected  of  the  darkened 
Koreans  ? 

Gradually,  however,  the  truth  made  its  way.  Mr.  Un- 
derwood baptized  the  first  convert  in  1886,  and  the  Metho- 
dist mission  received  its  first  convert  a  little  later  in  the 
same  year.  The  first  Protestant  church  was  organized  in 
Seoul,  in  September,  1887,  and  the  Sacrament  of  the  Lord's 
Supper  was  administered  to  the  new  believers  for  the  first 
time  Christmas  Day  of  that  year  in  Mr.  Underwood's  house. 
Only  seven  persons,  including  the  missionaries,  were  pres- 
ent at  that  small  but  historic  service.  After  ten  years  of 
patient  labor  by  the  missionaries  of  several  communions, 
there  were  still  only  141  baptized  Christians  in  all  Korea. 

The  work  early  found  a  foothold  in  Pyengyang  through 
a  few  Koreans,  who  had  wandered  northward  into  Man- 
churia and  had  there  come  under  the  influence  of  Mr.  Ross, 
and  had  been  converted.  Returning  to  Korea,  they  were 
more  fully  instructed  by  the  missionaries  in  Seoul,  and  then 
they  undertook  to  communicate  their  new  faith  to  their 
countrymen. 

By  1887  there  were  several  inquirers,  and  a  native  helper 
was  stationed  there  to  preach  to  them.  Soon  after  the 
Reverend  Samuel  A.  Moffett  arrived,  in  1889,  he  went  to 
Pyengyang.  He  found  bad  moral  conditions,  for  the  city 


PROTESTANT  MISSIONS  IN  KOREA  507 

was  notorious  for  wickedness.  A  handful  of  friendly  Ko- 
reans gathered  around  him,  but  the  difficulties  were  numer- 
ous and  formidable.  However,  Mr.  Moffett  took  a  little 
Korean  house,  lived  among  the  people,  and  by  patience  and 
tact  made  his  way  into  their  confidence.  In  1892  he  was 
joined  by  the  Reverend  Graham  Lee,  also  a  Presbyterian, 
and  by  M.  J.  Hall,  M.D.,  of  the  Methodist  mission. 

One  of  the  notable  Korean  Christians  of  this  early  period 
was  a  man  named  Kim  Chang  Sik.  Brought  by  a  Korean 
friend  to  the  home  of  a  missionary  in  Seoul,  his  curiosity 
was  excited  by  some  copies  of  the  New  Testament  in  Chi- 
nese. He  bought  one,  read  it,  and  believed.  He  quickly 
became  a  useful  worker,  and  in  1894  was  sent  to  his  home  in 
Pyengyang  to  aid  Doctor  Hall.  By  this  time  opposition 
had  become  violent.  Persecution  broke  out,  and  Kim  was 
one  of  the  first  to  be  arrested.  He  and  other  Christians 
were  cruelly  beaten,  placed  in  stocks,  and  warned  that  if 
they  did  not  give  up  "the  foreigner's  religion"  they  would 
be  punished  still  more  severely,  but  that  if  they  would  re- 
cant they  would  be  set  at  liberty.  The  others  in  their  pain 
and  terror  yielded,  but  Kim  remained  steadfast.  He  was 
taken  to  the  death-cell,  and,  although  believing  that  he 
would  be  decapitated  if  he  did  not  recant,  he  exclaimed  in 
a  spirit  worthy  of  the  ancient  martyrs:  "God  loves  me 
and  has  forgiven  my  sins.  How  can  I  curse  Him !"  For- 
tunately, orders  came  from  Seoul  to  release  the  prisoners, 
and  the  mangled  and  half-dead  Kim  went  out  with  the 
others.  His  fidelity  made  a  profound  impression  upon  the 
city,  and  people  began  to  say  that  there  must  be  something 
real  in  the  new  religion  when  a  man  was  willing  to  suffer 
so  much  for  it. 

The  war  of  1894  between  China  and  Japan  powerfully 
influenced  the  work.  Korea  became  the  battle-ground  of 
the  contending  forces.  Soon  it  became  evident  that  the 
decisive  battle  of  the  war  would  be  fought  in  the  vicinity 
of  Pyengyang.  The  wildest  excitement  prevailed.  In  the 
crash  much  Korean  property  was  destroyed,  fields  were 
ravaged,  and  many  of  the  unhappy  people,  caught  between 


508  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

the  upper  and  nether  millstones,  suffered  from  wounds  as 
well  as  fear.  The  habitually  unsanitary  condition  of  Pyeng- 
yang  was  made  worse  by  the  superstitious  belief  of  the 
people  that  the  city  rested  on  a  boat,  and  that  to  dig  wells 
would  make  holes  in  its  bottom  so  that  it  would  sink.  The 
only  available  water-supply  therefore  was  the  river,  and 
as  that  was  polluted  by  the  numerous  bodies  of  men  and 
animals,  typhus-fever  and  dysentery  developed  and  swept 
among  the  poor  Koreans  with  frightful  virulence. 

Although  the  situation  was  known  to  be  full  of  danger, 
the  missionaries  heroically  remained  at  their  posts.  They 
went  about  among  the  panic-stricken  people  at  the  risk  of 
their  lives,  binding  up  the  wounds  of  the  injured,  caring  for 
the  sick,  burying  the  dead,  and  doing  everything  in  their 
power  to  allay  terror  and  to  urge  trust  in  God.  To  the  in- 
expressible regret  of  all  who  knew  him,  the  beloved  Doctor 
Hall,  of  the  Methodist  mission,  was  among  those  who  were 
fatally  stricken  by  typhus-fever.  The  Koreans  then  real- 
ized for  the  first  time  that  the  American  missionaries  were 
the  best  friends  they  had.  Public  sentiment  began  to  change. 

An  epidemic  of  cholera  in  Seoul  brought  out  like  devo- 
tion on  the  part  of  the  missionaries  in  the  capital.  They 
toiled  indefatigably  for  the  sick  and  dying,  performing 
offices  from  which  the  bravest  Koreans  shrank,  exposing 
themselves  without  stint,  and  saving  hundreds  of  lives. 
"All  these  recoveries  made  no  little  stir  in  the  city.  Proc- 
lamations were  posted  on  the  walls  telling  people  there  was 
no  need  for  them  to  die  when  they  might  go  to  the  Chris- 
tian hospital  and  live.  People  who  watched  missionaries 
working  over  the  sick  night  after  night  said  to  each  other: 
'How  these  foreigners  love  us !  Would  we  do  as  much  for 
one  of  our  own  kin  as  they  do  for  strangers?'  Some  men 
who  saw  Mr.  Underwood  hurrying  along  the  road  in  the 
gray  twilight  of  a  summer  morning,  remarked :  '  There  goes 
the  Jesus  man;  he  works  all  night  and  all  day  with  the  sick 
without  resting.'  'Why  does  he  do  it?'  said  another. 
'Because  he  loves  us,'  was  the  reply."  l 

1  Mrs.  H.  G.  Underwood,  Fifteen  Years  Among  the  Top-Knots,  p.  144. 


PROTESTANT  MISSIONS  IN  KOREA  509 

From  that  time  the  work  made  rapid  progress.  The  story 
forms  one  of  the  most  stirring  chapters  in  the  history  of 
modern  missions.  The  people  who  had  been  living  in  dark- 
ness and  superstition,  who  had  seen  ghosts  and  demons  in 
every  rock  and  tree,  in  the  murmur  of  the  waves,  and  in  the 
roar  of  the  thunder,  heard  the  missionaries  teach  in  their 
villages  that  the  Supreme  Power  was  not  an  evil  spirit 
trying  to  injure  them  but  a  loving  Father  whose  heart- 
went  out  to  them  as  His  wandering  children;  and  who,  if 
they  turned  to  Him  in  repentance  and  faith,  would  bestow 
upon  them  the  joy  and  dignity  of  a  new  life.  Eagerly  the 
people  listened,  this  time  with  clearer  understanding. 

The  good  news  began  to  spread  in  all  directions,  and  the 
first  decade  of  the  twentieth  century  saw  an  amazing  de- 
velopment. The  average  net  increase  of  the  Northern 
Presbyterian  Mission  for  thirteen  years-  was  38  per  cent. 
The  Reverend  D.  A.  Bunker,  of  the  Methodist  Church, 
wrote:  "Work  along  all  lines  goes  forward  so  fast  that  we 
are  all  on  the  run  to  keep  pace  with  it.  The  church  of  which 
I  have  charge  in  the  city  is  carrying  on  home-mission  work 
in  over  140  villages.  At  every  chapel  there  are  candidates 
for  baptism  or  probationship  awaiting  us.  In  the  past 
ten  days  611  new  names  have  been  added  to  the  list  of  be- 
lievers." In  Pyongyang,  the  Reverend  W.  L.  Swallen  re- 
ported that  2,000  persons  confessed  Christ  in  the  revival 
of  1907.  The  churches  were  filled  to  overflowing,  and  in 
order  to  relieve  the  congestion  the  men  and  women  were 
compelled  to  meet  at  separate  hours.  The  meetings  were 
characterized  by  deep  feeling  and  fervent  prayer,  sometimes 
lasting  till  midnight. 

The  awakening  manifested  itself  in  varying  degrees  in 
many  parts  of  the  country.  Seoul  as  the  capital  and  me- 
tropolis is  a  peculiarly  difficult  city  to  influence,  but  the 
preacher  at  the  Yun  Mot  Kol  Church  often  faced  1,500 
persons.  The  ordinary  experience  of  all  the  city  churches 
was  a  crowded  house,  and  a  union  meeting  would  bring  out 
from  3,000  to  5,000  people.  Taiku  Station,  which  had 
been  opened  in  1897  by  the  Reverend  and  Mrs.  James  E. 


510  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

Adams,  reported  that  by  the  end  of  the  first  five  years,  177 
adults  had  been  baptized;  by  the  end  of  a  decade,  6,145; 
and  that  the  twentieth  anniversary  witnessed  17,448  Chris- 
tians in  the  city  and  outlying  villages.  Syenchyun,  one 
hundred  miles  north  of  Pyongyang,  although  only  an  ordi- 
nary town  in  size,  sprung  into  prominence  for  its  remarka- 
ble missionary  work.  The  station  was  not  organized  until 
1901,  but  within  sixteen  years  it  reported  187  outstations, 
11,681  communicants,  5,416  catechumens,  and  28,350  ad- 
herents. At  Kangkai,  an  isolated  northern  city  of  10,000 
inhabitants,  there  was  no  resident  missionary  until  1908, 
and  only  an  itinerating  visitor  at  rare  intervals.  When  he 
made  his  annual  visit,  the  people  came  long  distances  to 
meet  him,  crowded  the  rooms  in  which  he  spoke,  and  often 
stood  outside  in  the  snow  for  hours  to  hear  the  one  message 
of  the  year.  From  this  scanty  seed-sowing,  a  vigorous  con- 
gregation grew  up,  and  over  1,200  men  and  women  threw 
away  their  fetiches,  stopped  sacrificing  to  evil  spirits,  kept 
Sunday  as  a  day  of  rest  and  Christian  worship,  and,  in  spite 
of  persecution  by  angry  neighbors,  followed  the  light  that 
they  had  dimly  seen. 

Sorai  became  a  transfigured  community.  Think  of  a 
village  of  fifty-eight  houses,  in  fifty  of  which  all  persons  over 
fifteen  years  of  age  are  Christians;  a  community  in  which 
there  is  no  liquor,  no  brawling,  no  vice  of  any  kind;  where 
Sunday  is  scrupulously  observed,  and  the  entire  population 
attends  church,  Sunday-school,  and  prayer-meeting !  The 
church  is  the  principal  building  in  the  place,  almost  impos- 
ing in  comparison  with  the  humble  homes  of  the  people. 
Two  brothers  were  instrumental  in  creating  this  model 
Christian  village.  The  elder  was  converted  through  the 
Reverend  John  Ross  during  a  visit  in  Manchuria.  Soon 
after  his  return  he  met  Doctor  Underwood,  who  gladly  gave 
him  the  instruction  he  was  so  eager  to  obtain.  Filled  with 
joy  and  zeal,  like  Andrew  of  old,  "he  first  findeth  his  own 
brother  and  said  unto  him:  'We  have  found  the  Messiah,' 
and  he  brought  him  to  Jesus."  Removing  to  Sorai,  these 
brothers  preached  the  gospel  with  such  power  and  exem- 


PROTESTANT  MISSIONS  IN  KOREA  511 

plified  it  with  such  beauty  of  character  that  the  whole 
village  was  transformed.  Long  shall  we  cherish  the  memory 
of  our  visit.  We  arrived  late  Saturday  afternoon  after  a 
hard  journey.  As  we  gazed  upon  the  Christian  homes 
clustering  at  the  foot  of  the  hill,  the  wide  expanse  of  meadow 
beyond,  and  farther  away,  but  in  plain  view,  the  quiet  sea, 
the  clouds  which  had  heavily  lowered  during  the  day  sud- 
denly broke,  the  setting  sun  burst  forth  in  radiant  beauty, 
and  at  evening-time  there  was  light.  A  trumpet  sounded 
from  the  church  steps.  Softly  and  yet  clearly  it  echoed 
among  the  trees  and  through  the  village,  and  soon  answering 
groups  of  white-robed  figures  were  wending  their  way  up 
the  hillside  to  the  house  of  God,  where  we  communed  long 
with  them  as  the  shadows  fell  and  the  stars  came  out. 

Vividly  interesting  instances  might  be  cited  from  the 
history  of  several  other  stations.  Many  parts  of  the  coun- 
try were  powerfully  moved.  The  Reverend  William  A. 
Noble,  of  the  Methodist  Church,  wrote:  "The  total  in- 
crease in  followers  during  the  year  has  not  been  paralleled 
during  the  history  of  our  work  in  northern  Korea.  The 
district  now  records  a  total  following  of  more  than  all  our 
our  work  in  Korea  three  years  ago.  .  .  .  The  immediate 
effect  of  the  revival  has  been  to  revolutionize  the  character 
of  the  church.  It  has  given  the  people  at  large  a  different 
idea  of  what  it  means  to  become  a  Christian.  Now  they 
are  discriminating  in  judgment.  A  man  will  take  a  stand 
in  relation  to  moral  questions  with  intelligence  and  commit 
himself  only  when  ready  to  make  a  change  in  his  life."  In 
1911  the  Methodist  Board  of  Missions  reported  that, 
within  the  short  period  of  twenty-five  years,  the  church  in 
Korea  had  grown  to  over  60,000  members  and  probation- 
ers. Stations  had  been  opened  at  six  centres.  An  Annual 
Conference  had  been  organized  with  34  ministerial  mem- 
bers and  21  probationers,  native  and  foreign,  7  districts, 
over  400  organized  congregations,  and  more  than  a  thou- 
sand preaching-places.  The  quarters-centennial  year  was 
signalized  by  the  first  appointment  to  the  district  superin- 
tendency  of  a  Korean  minister,  and  the  sending  of  a  Korean 


512  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

missionary,  supported  by  the  Korean  churches,  to  work 
in  China.  In  educational  work,  there  were  172  schools 
with  6,083  pupils,  besides  183  theological  students.  The 
Woman's  Foreign  Missionary  Society  had  schools  for  the 
training  of  Bible-women  and  nurses,  and  for  the  education 
of  the  blind  and  of  deaf-mutes.  During  the  preceding  year 
30,000  patients  were  cared  for  by  the  Methodist  physicians, 
and  since  the  opening  of  the  mission  over  500,000  patients 
had  been  treated  in  the  hospitals. 

All  the  missions  reported  large  gains.  The  Southern 
Methodist  mission  made  a  net  increase  of  62  per  cent  in  a 
single  year.  "The  people  are  turning  to  Christ  as  I  have 
never  seen  in  any  field,"  wrote  Bishop  Candler.  The  Young 
Men's  Christian  Association  shared  in  the  general  advance. 
Within  two  years  the  membership  of  the  City  Association 
had  risen  to  600,  and  Secretary  Gillett  could  write:  "In- 
stead of  the  interest  and  enthusiasm  of  the  membership 
subsiding,  as  some  of  our  friends  feared,  it  is  growing  con- 
stantly. We  are  turning  men  away  now  for  lack  of  room. 
Our  rooms  are  so  jammed  at  the  lectures  we  hold  every 
Tuesday  and  Thursday  evening  that  men  are  unable  to  get 
within  earshot  of  the  speaker.  I  have  frequently  seen  as 
many  as  a  hundred  gathered  outside  at  the  windows."  The 
association  now  has  a  fine  plant  in  an  excellent  location,  the 
building  erected  with  a  generous  gift  by  Mr.  John  Wana- 
maker  of  Philadelphia,  but  the  valuable  site  and  the  running 
expenses  paid  for  by  the  Koreans.  The  visitor  finds  a 
day-school,  a  gymnasium,  industrial  classes  and  shops  for 
practical  training,  and  numerous  meetings  of  various  kinds. 

The  missionaries  found  results  multiplying  with  such 
rapidity  that  they  were  overworked  in  the  effort  to  organize 
and  superintend  them.  Every  missionary  assigned  to 
evangelistic  work  is  virtually  a  bishop  of  an  extensive  di- 
ocese, and  is  obliged  to  toil  and  travel  almost  incessantly 
in  order  to  keep  any  kind  of  oversight  of  his  numerous 
and  scattered  outstations.  A  typical  missionary,  whose  re- 
port is  before  me,  supervises  forty-seven  churches  and 
thirty  other  outstations.  He  visits  each  of  these  churches 


PROTESTANT  MISSIONS  IN  KOREA  513 

and  outstations  twice  a  year,  and  some  of  them  oftener. 
This  obliges  him  to  ride  1,500  miles  on  horseback,  besides 
the  time  he  spends  in  trains  and  on  foot.  Thirty  miles  a 
day  is  a  common  experience,  with  one  or  more  sermons 
preached  in  the  evening.  This  itineration  keeps  him  from 
home  two  hundred  days  of  the  year.  Few  old-time  Metho- 
dist circuit-riders  could  offer  a  better  record.  These  itiner- 
ating tours  are  busy  times  for  the  missionary.  He  must 
labor  early  and  late,  for  he  is  expected  to  assign  native 
workers  to  their  circuits,  give  the  leaders  instruction  re- 
garding their  work,  lay  out  a  course  of  Bible  study  for  those 
who  are  prepared  to  take  it,  invite  selected  men  and  women 
to  attend  the  training-classes  at  the  nearest  central  station, 
examine  candidates  for  admission  to  the  church,  settle  dis- 
putes often  prolonged  and  loquacious,  administer  discipline, 
baptize,  marry,  and  perhaps  bury. 

When  the  weather  is  pleasant  in  the  spring  and  fall, 
travelling  in  the  interior  is  a  delightful  experience,  as  I  can 
testify;  but  in  the  storms  of  winter,  and  in  the  rainy  season 
of  summer,  itineration  is  quite  another  matter.  The  hard- 
ships of  travel  prior  to  the  completion  of  the  railway,  and 
to-day  in  the  large  parts  of  the  country  that  are  not  reached 
by  rail,  are  illustrated  by  the  journey  of  two  missionaries, 
one  of  them  accompanied  by  his  wife  and  child,  on  their 
way  from  an  interior  station  to  Pyongyang:  "It  rained 
steadily  for  a  week  before  starting.  The  rivers  were  up  to 
our  chins,  and  we  not  only  had  to  ford  them  ourselves  but 
induce  frightened  natives  to  do  so.  The  horse  that  car- 
ried the  food-boxes  and  cots  fell  behind,  and  we  were  obliged 
to  eat  anything  we  could  get,  and  to  sleep  on  the  floor,  Ko- 
rean fashion,  in  wet  clothes  and  devoured  by  insects.  The 
pouring  rain  and  flooded  streams  made  fast  travelling,  or  any 
travelling  at  all,  nearly  impossible.  In  one  place,  we  waded 
through  water  and  mud  to  our  waists  for  five  li  (a  mile  and 
two-thirds).  This  was  especially  hard  on  the  chair  coolies, 
who  had  to  keep  the  poles  on  their  shoulders  the  whole  dis- 
tance, and  could  not  put  down  the  chair  to  rest.  In  spite 
of  all  obstacles  we  made  the  hundred  miles  in  five  days." 


514  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

It  is  hazardous  to  give  exact  statistics  of  the  mission  work, 
as  the  figures  that  are  correct  as  one  writes  are  sure  to  be 
below  the  mark  by  the  time  this  book  is  read.  The  annual 
volume  of  The  Christian  Movement  in  Japan  includes  re- 
ports for  Korea,  and  may  be  consulted  for  the  latest  returns. 
Suffice  it  here  that  the  last  report  gave  219,220  Protestant 
Christians,  including  definitely  known  adherents,  in  little 
Korea.  Adding  the  Roman  and  Greek  Catholic  reports 
swells  the  total  to  318,708,  or  about  three  times  as  many 
as  there  were  in  all  the  world  at  the  end  of  the  first  century 
of  the  Christian  era.  Seldom  has  it  been  given  to  the  first 
generation  of  missionaries  in  any  land  to  witness  such  rich 
fruitage  while  yet  in  their  prime.  Every  year,  it  seemed 
that  the  movement  must  have  reached  its  climax,  and  that 
there  would  certainly  be  a  reaction;  but  every  year  saw  it 
broadening  and  deepening  until  it  looked  as  if  Korea  would 
be  the  first  of  the  non-Christian  nations  to  become  evan- 
gelized. 

Almost  every  night  we  had  a  picture  in  chiaroscuro  of 
the  spiritual  condition  of  Asia.  A  humble  church,  whose 
flickering  oil-lamps  made  the  room  bright  in  contrast  with 
the  surrounding  darkness,  was  filled  with  believers  who  were 
rejoicing  within  the  pale  of  "His  marvellous  light."  Be- 
yond them  crowding  the  doors  were  many  others,  not  yet 
wholly  in  the  light,  but  partially  illuminated  by  it,  their 
eager  faces  turned  toward  the  place  from  which  it  was  shin- 
ing, and  where  a  man  was  speaking  of  the  Light  of  the  World. 
Behind  these  were  still  others,  whom  I  could  not  count, 
standing  in  deeper  shadows.  Now  and  then  a  flare  of  the 
lamp  shot  a  ray  of  light  into  the  gloom  and  showed  scores 
of  spectators,  some  indifferent,  some  curious,  some  gravely 
wondering;  and  then  the  darkness  silently  enfolded  them 
again  so  that  only  indistinct  masses  of  heavier  blackness 
showed  where  an  unnumbered  multitude  was  gathered. 
As  I  looked  upon  this  scene  night  after  night,  I  was  encour- 
aged by  the  number  of  those  who  had  come  into  the  light; 
but  my  heart  was  moved  for  those  who  were  standing  in 
the  dark. 


PROTESTANT  MISSIONS  IN  KOREA  515 

Why  did  Christianity  make  such  rapid  growth  in  Korea, 
far  outstripping,  in  the  number  of  converts,  the  results  of 
missionary  effort  in  Japan  and,  in  proportion  to  population, 
in  China? 

Many  Christian  workers  in  Korea  and  some  in  other 
fields  attribute  this  success  to  superiority  of  policies  and 
methods.  The  opinion  has  even  been  expressed  that  if  a 
like  course  had  been  adopted  in  China,  that  country  would 
now  be  largely  evangelized.  It  may  be  well,  therefore,  to 
note  the  main  outlines  of  the  Korea  missionary  programme 
as  given  by  one  of  the  influential  factors  in  shaping  it,  the 
Reverend  James  E.  Adams,  D.D.,  of  Taiku:  "(l)The 
Church's  first  and  chief  task  is  to  preach  the  gospel  to 
every  soul  it  can  reach.  (2)  As  far  as  possible,  all  who  ac- 
cept the  gospel  should  be  trained  in  knowledge,  in  faith, 
in  self-control,  in  Christian  activity,  and  from  among  these 
should  be  chosen  the  most  Christ-like  and  capable  to  whom 
should  be  given  an  education  that  will  fit  them  to  become 
leaders  in  their  church  and  nation.  (3)  During  such  train- 
ing it  is  essential  to  self-respecting  character  and  inde- 
pendence on  the  part  of  the  Church,  as  on  the  part  of  indi- 
viduals, that  it  should  finance  its  own  way  just  as  far  as 
possible,  with  help  only  in  the  difficult  places;  for  in  any 
land  a  Gospel  not  worth  paying  for  is  not  worth  having,  and 
the  simple  facts  are  that  the  Gospel  costs  less  than  heathen- 
ism even  in  lands  where  it  costs  most,  and  subsidizing  the 
Church  is  fatal  to  Christian  character.  In  accordance 
with  this  principle,  all  ordinary  church  buildings  and  equip- 
ment should  be  within  the  financial  means  of  the  people. 
(4)  All  buildings,  equipment,  and  machinery  as  far  as  pos- 
sible should  be  in  harmony  with  national  ideals  of  archi- 
tecture and  arrangement.  (5)  Self-government  is  the 
legitimate  right  of  any  Church  that  even  approximately 
pays  its  own  way,  and  should  be  given  according  as  the 
young  Church  is  able  to  assume  its  responsibilities,  and,  in 
practically  every  case,  before  it  is  demanded.  (6)  The  in- 
dividual missionary  and  the  Mission,  as  far  as  able,  ought 
to  live  ahead  of  the  Church;  that  is,  ought  to  reach  out 


516  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

and  pre-empt  for  the  future  those  fields  and  every  field  of 
Christian  activity  and  of  opportunity  which  the  young 
Church  is  unable,  not  unwilling,  to  lay  hold  of  for  itself, 
or  which  it  has  not  as  yet  the  vision  to  see.  (7)  The  Mis- 
sion as  a  Mission  has  no  call  to  give  secular  education  to 
non-Christians,  but  it  should,  to  the  extent  of  its  ability, 
give  a  broad  education  to  the  greatest  possible  number  of 
its  sons  and  daughters.  (8)  The  Mission  exists  only  for 
the  Church;  it  should  not  even  consider  permanency,  and 
should  make  all  its  work  tend  to  its  own  withdrawal  as 
soon  as  the  ends  which  it  seeks  are  accomplished." 

These  are  excellent  principles,  but  it  is  clear  that  they 
are  not  peculiar  to  Korea.  With  the  possible  exception  of 
number  seven,  they  are  among  the  axioms  of  sound  mission- 
ary policy  everywhere;  and  the  only  change  that  could  be 
suggested  in  number  seven  would  be  to  make  the  last  clause 
read:  "give  a  broad  Christian  education  to  its  sons  and 
daughters,  and  to  such  others  as  it  can  bring  under  direct 
religious  influence  for  the  forming  of  Christian  character." 
These  principles  account  very  satisfactorily  for  results  any- 
where, but  they  do  not  explain  why  results  in  Korea  have 
been  more  quickly  achieved  than  in  some  other  mission 
fields  where  substantially  the  same  principles  have  gov- 
erned the  work.  Evidently  we  must  look  for  something 
in  Korea  that  is  more  distinctive.  Among  a  number  of 
such  factors  that  might  be  enumerated,  the  following  may 
be  mentioned: 

First:  Koreans  are  temperamentally  more  docile  and  emo- 
tional than  Chinese  and  Japanese,  so  that  it  is  easier  to 
make  an  impression  upon  them. 

Second:  For  centuries  Korea  was  a  vassal  of  its  power- 
ful neighbors  and  was  subject  to  foreign  domination. 
Politically  small  and  weak  in  comparison  with  the  strong 
adjoining  nations,  the  Koreans  had  become  accustomed  to 
being  led  from  the  outside.  When,  therefore,  the  mis- 
sionary gained  entrance,  he  found  less  national  indepen- 
dence and  self-sufficiency  to  be  overcome  than  in  China  and 
Japan,  which  from  time  immemorial  had  regarded  foreign- 


PROTESTANT  MISSIONS  IN  KOREA  517 

ere  as  inferiors  and  suppliants.  To  the  Korean,  on  the 
contrary,  the  missionary  appeared  as  a  superior  being. 

Third:  While  ancestral  and  demon  worship  were  for- 
midable obstacles,  there  was  no  powerful  state  religion  as 
in  most  other  Asiatic  countries,  so  that  there  was  no  in- 
fluential and  strongly  intrenched  priestly  class  to  oppose 
the  missionaries.  Buddhist  monks  were  regarded  with 
contempt,  and  their  loyalty  was  so  distrusted  that  they 
were  not  permitted  to  enter  the  capital.  The  real  religion 
of  Korea  was  Animism,  and  animistic  peoples  are  usually 
the  readiest  to  respond  to  the  gospel  message.  Their  lives 
are  spent  in  constant  fear  of  demons.  Christianity  comes 
to  them  as  a  blessed  deliverance.  Uganda,  the  Kameruns, 
and  the  South  Sea  Islands  are  illustrations  of  this.  The 
marvellous  success  of  the  Baptists  in  Burma  has  been  chiefly 
among  those  elements  of  the  population  in  which  animistic 
ideas  were  strongest.  In  Korea,  also,  the  notable  success 
of  missionary  work  has  been  influenced  in  no  small  degree 
by  the  fact  that  the  real  religion  of  the  people  is  Animism. 
It  would  be  difficult  to  exaggerate  the  terror  in  which  the 
people  lived.  When  the  missionary  went  among  them 
with  his  message  of  emancipation  from  fear,  the  tidings 
seemed  almost  too  good  to  be  true. 

Fourth:  Poverty,  oppression  and  distress,  resulting  from 
excessive  taxation  and  the  corrupt  administration  of  jus- 
tice, had  begotten  in  many  minds  a  longing  for  relief,  and 
a  hope  that  the  missionary  could  secure  it  for  them.  A 
Methodist  missionary  told  me  that  most  of  those  who  came 
to  the  missionary  for  the  first  time  were  influenced  by  this 
motive.  Beyond  any  other  people  that  I  saw  in  Asia,  the 
Koreans  impressed  me  as  pathetically  stretching  out  their 
hands  for  help  and  guidance  out  of  bitter  bondage.  In 
accepting  Christianity,  they  had  less  to  lose  in  a  worldly 
way  than  the  Chinese  and  Japanese.  In  countries  where 
another  religion  is  an  established  state  institution  of  which 
the  Emperor  is  the  head,  or  as  in  India  where  it  is  forti- 
fied by  walls  of  caste,  or  as  in  Turkey  and  Persia  where 
Islam  is  an  implacable  foe,  the  resisting  power  of  the  na- 


518  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

tional  system  is  enormous.  A  confession  of  Christ  often 
cuts  a  man  off  from  the  associations  that  he  most  values. 
He  is  usually  disowned  by  his  family,  ostracized  by  society, 
and  ruined  in  business.  The  Korean  did  not  always  find 
the  transition  to  Christianity  easy,  but,  except  at  the  be- 
ginning of  missionary  effort,  he  encountered  nothing  like 
the  obstacles  that  the  convert  had  to  surmount  in  some 
other  lands. 

Fifth:  It  is  comparatively  easy  to  induce  converts  to 
become  personal  workers  for  Christ  among  their  own  peo- 
ple in  a  country  like  Korea.  The  typical  Korean  had  fewer 
interests  to  occupy  his  attention.  He  commanded  a  larger 
proportion  of  his  own  time,  and  he  was  more  amenable  to 
missionary  direction  than  converts  in  such  countries  as 
China,  Japan,  and  India,  where  society  is  more  highly  de- 
veloped, where  relations  are  more  complicated,  where  social 
and  business  status  is  more  rigidly  fixed,  where  the  struggle 
for  livelihood  makes  severer  demands  upon  time  and 
strength,  and  where  that  pride  and  reserve  which  all  civil- 
ized men  feel,  in  some  measure  at  least,  make  them  more 
conservative  in  proclaiming  a  new  faith,  with  perhaps  the 
consequent  loss  of  social  and  business  advantages. 

Sixth:  The  experience  of  the  helpless  people  during  the 
China-Japan  War  of  1894  disarmed  suspicion  and  turned 
the  tide  of  popular  sentiment.  As  they  saw  the  hostile 
armies  fighting  in  their  cities,  devastating  their  fields  and 
destroying  their  homes,  they  turned  in  a  frenzy  of  fear  and 
dismay  to  the  friendly  missionary,  beseeching  him  to  save 
them;  and  their  hearts  were  won  by  the  sympathy  and 
devotion  of  the  missionary's  response. 

Seventh:  The  favor  of  the  court  was  a  factor  that  should 
not  be  left  out  of  account.  The  Emperor  openly  befriended 
the  missionaries.  I  have  referred  in  a  former  chapter  to 
the  facts  that  at  the  beginning  of  missionary  work  Doctor 
Allen  saved  the  life  of  the  King's  nephew,  that  the  grateful 
monarch  gave  him  a  hospital,  and  that  after  the  murder  of 
the  Queen,  when  the  terrified  ruler  expected  his  own  assas- 
sination, he  found  counsel  and  courage  in  the  missionaries. 


519 

The  Emperor  personally  expressed  to  me  his  remembrance 
of  their  fidelity  in  his  hour  of  peril.  His  favor  meant  no 
spiritual  help,  but  the  Imperial  smile  counted  for  much  in 
an  Oriental  country,  and  few  Koreans  were  disposed  to 
antagonize  those  whom  the  Emperor  favored. 

One  should  not  fall  into  the  error  of  Gibbon,  who,  in  his 
History  of  the  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,  ignored 
a  primary  cause  of  the  rapid  growth  of  the  Christian  Church 
in  the  first  centuries  of  the  Christian  era,  and  emphasized 
only  the  secondary  causes,  which  he  defined  as  the  inflexi- 
ble zeal  of  the  Christians;  the  doctrine  of  a  future  life;  the 
miraculous  powers  ascribed  to  the  primitive  Church;  the 
pure  and  austere  morals  of  the  Christians;  the  union  and 
discipline  of  the  Christian  republic.  These  were,  indeed, 
powerful  contributory  influences;  but  of  themselves  they 
would  hardly  have  carried  Christianity  so  far  and  sustained 
it  so  long.  In  Korea,  as  in  the  Roman  Empire,  the  causes 
that  have  been  mentioned  need  to  be  supplemented  by  the 
fact  that  no  one  of  them,  nor  all  of  them  combined,  fully 
account  for  such  triumphs  of  the  gospel  as  Korea  has  wit- 
nessed. They  undoubtedly  prepared  the  way  for  the  mis- 
sionaries; but  the  best  soil  in  the  world  will  produce  noth- 
ing of  value  unless  the  right  seed  is  sowed  and  properly 
cultivated.  We  must,  therefore,  include  in  our  survey  the 
inherent  character  of  the  gospel,  its  satisfaction  of  the  hunger 
of  the  soul,  and  its  mighty  expansive  power  under  the  divine 
influence.  But  I  am  discussing  now,  not  what  regenerates 
human  hearts  in  all  lands,  but  the  special  circumstances 
which  made  man's  work  less  difficult  in  Korea  than  in  some 
other  fields  where  the  same  kind  of  seed,  planted  with  equal 
faithfulness,  was  longer  in  germinating,  and  where  like 
methods  and  care  in  cultivation  resulted  in  less  bountiful 
harvests.  The  conditions  that  have  been  described  created 
a  state  of  receptivity  in  the  Korean  mind,  a  remarkable  pre- 
paration of  the  soil  for  the  gospel  seed.  Korea  was  like  a 
Western  prairie,  ready  for  the  plough  of  the  husbandman 
and  able  to  yield  a  harvest  the  first  season;  while  the  vaster, 
haughtier,  more  stubborn,  phlegmatic,  and  self-satisfied 


520  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

population  of  China  was  like  the  rocky  and  densely  wooded 
region  of  the  New  England  coast,  where  weary  years  of  toil 
had  to  be  spent  in  hewing  down  the  forest,  uprooting  gigan- 
tic stumps,  and  gathering  out  stones.  Comparisons  are, 
therefore,  unfair.  Conditions  independent  of  the  mission- 
ary made  the  task  of  evangelization  less  difficult  in  one  field 
than  in  the  other.  It  was  to  be  expected  that  a  given 
amount  of  effort  would  produce  an  earlier  harvest  in  Korea 
than  in  fields  where  such  conditions  did  not  exist. 

And  yet  it  would  be  wrong  to  give  the  impression  that 
there  were  no  obstacles  to  be  encountered  in  Korea.  It  is 
not  easy  to  induce  any  non-Christian  people  to  change  its 
ancestral  faith.  Superstitious  fears,  the  inertia  of  indolence, 
the  apathy  of  despair,  the  jealousy  of  the  literary  class,  the 
demoralizing  example  of  officials — all  these  heavily  re- 
inforce the  ever-present  influences  of  the  world,  the  flesh, 
and  the  devil.  The  human  heart  does  not  readily  relin- 
quish its  idols  hi  Korea  or  anywhere  else.  The  special 
credit  of  the  missionaries  is  that  they  were  wise  and  faith- 
ful in  taking  advantage  of  the  peculiar  conditions  of  the 
land.  Coming  in  "the  fulness  of  the  time,"  they  discerned 
the  providential  significance  of  the  hour.  It  was  not  neces- 
sary to  begin  with  schools,  as  in  Moslem  lands.  Korea  was 
ready  for  the  direct  preaching  of  the  gospel,  and  to  that 
preaching  the  missionaries  gave  themselves  with  unceasing 
zeal. 

Some  methods  of  mission  work  that  have  been  adopted 
in  other  fields  have  been  developed  with  such  conspicuous 
success  in  Korea  that  they  merit  special  mention.  One  of 
these  is  the  training-class  for  Christian  workers.  The  classes 
usually  last  from  ten  to  fourteen  days.  The  larger  ones  are 
held  at  the  central  stations,  and  smaller  ones  led  by  Korean 
Christians  are  conducted  at  some  of  the  outstations.  Be- 
ginning with  one  class  of  seven  men  in  1891,  the  classes  have 
increased  in  numbers  until  now  a  single  mission  holds  over 
800  classes  every  year,  with  an  aggregate  attendance  ex- 
ceeding 50,000  persons.  Pyongyang  has  become  famous  for 
its  large  classes,  the  number  of  persons  attending  often  ex- 


PROTESTANT  MISSIONS  IN  KOREA  521 

ceeding  1,000.  About  500  Korean  workers  co-operated 
with  the  missionaries  in  holding  classes  in  a  recent  year  at 
250  different  places  in  northern  Korea,  the  attendance  being 
over  12,000.  It  is  not  uncommon  for  Koreans  to  walk 
more  than  a  hundred  miles  to  attend  these  classes,  bringing 
their  own  food  with  them,  and  some  have  journeyed  as^far 
as  three  hundred  miles.  Then  these  eager  Christians  go 
back  to  do  personal  evangelistic  work  in  their  villages. 
There  is  something  inspiring  in  the  contemplation  of  such 
devotion,  and  it  accounts  in  no  small  measure  for  the  splen- 
did success  of  the  missionary  movement  in  Korea. 

Self-support,  too,  has  been  pressed  with  striking  results. 
From  the  beginning,  Korean  Christians  have  not  been  al- 
lowed to  expect  paid  employment  from  the  missionaries, 
nor  have  they  received  it,  save  in  comparatively  few  and 
exceptional  cases.  Foreign  money  has  been  used  to  some 
extent  in  building  churches  in  the  large  central  stations 
where  the  missionaries  reside,  but  in  the  villages  the  be- 
lievers meet  in  one  another's  houses  until  they  are  strong 
enough  to  build  a  church  for  themselves.  The  edifice  is 
usually  a  very  humble  one,  but  it  is  as  good  as  the  houses 
in  which  the  members  live,  and  sometimes,  as  in  Sorai,  it 
is  the  most  notable  building  in  the  community.  The  peo- 
ple prize  it  because  it  has  cost  them  something,  and  because 
it  belongs  to  them.  The  most  competent  man  among  them 
is  selected,  in  consultation  with  the  missionary,  as  their 
leader;  and  he  is  responsible,  under  the  missionary,  for  the 
conduct  of  the  work,  without  compensation,  like  a  Sunday- 
school  superintendent  in  America.  The  missionary  visits 
these  outstations  once  or  twice  a  year  to  give  such  counsel 
and  supervision  as  may  be  needed;  but  at  all  other  times 
the  Christians  manage  their  own  affairs.  After  a  while, 
when  the  whole  time  of  the  leader  is  required,  he  receives 
a  small  salary,  about  what  the  average  member  of  the 
group  lives  upon;  but  the  people  pay  it.  Their  poverty  is 
startling  to  an  American;  but  they  support  him  as  best 
they  can.  A  limited  number  of  qualified  Christians  are 
employed  by  the  missionaries  for  evangelistic  work  among 


522  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

non-Christians;  although  some  of  these,  also,  are  main- 
tained by  the  larger  groups  of  Christians.  The  mission- 
aries do  not  go  to  unreasonable  extremes  in  their  refusal  to 
employ  native  workers,  and  they  use  them  wherever  the 
interests  of  the  work  appear  to  justify  them.  But  the  pres- 
sure is  strong  for  self-support  and  self-propagation.  No 
Christian  is  permitted  to  feel  that  he  has  any  financial  claim 
on  the  missionary,  or  that,  if  he  is  employed,  the  employ- 
ment is  anything  more  than  temporary.  The  Koreans  now 
support  a  large  majority  of  their  workers,  churches,  and 
primary  schools.  They  rightly  regard  them  as  their  own, 
and  they  are  devotedly  loyal  to  them. 

The  missionaries  have  been  particularly  wise  in  pressing 
the  principle  of  the  self-propagation  of  the  church.  Con- 
verts are  urged  to  carry  the  Christian  message  to  their 
neighbors  and  friends  at  once.  Koreans  are  fluent  talkers, 
and  they  preach  as  readily  as  they  give.  Many  Koreans 
have  a  natural  gift  for  public  speaking,  and  they  find  inter- 
esting scope  for  it  in  proclaiming  the  gospel.  Indeed,  the 
chief  work  of  direct  evangelization  is  now  ardently  done  by 
the  Koreans  themselves.  Willingness  to  lead  others  to 
Christ  is  deemed  a  test  of  fitness  for  church  membership. 
Thus  the  Korean  churches  are  to  a  remarkable  degree  work- 
ing evangelistic  bodies.  "With  great  power"  give  "they 
witness  of  the  resurrection  of  the  Lord  Jesus,  and  great 
grace"  is  "upon  them  all."  If  any  one  feature  of  the  Ko- 
rean method  needs  to  be  heralded  as  an  example  to  Chris- 
tians both  at  home  and  abroad  it  is  this — the  duty  and 
privilege  of  the  individual  disciple  to  witness  for  Christ 
without  depending  upon  his  minister  to  do  it  for  him,  and 
without  expectation  of  financial  reward,  but  living  and 
teaching  the  gospel  in  the  sphere  of  life  in  which  he  was 
before. 

I  asked  the  leaders  of  the  Korean  Christians  in  several 
conferences:  "What  is  it  in  Christianity  that  particularly 
appeals  to  the  Korean  mind?"  The  answers  naturally 
varied,  but  the  ones  most  frequently  recurring  were  "sal- 
vation," "joy."  The  poor  Koreans  were  living  in  wretch- 


PROTESTANT  MISSIONS  IN  KOREA  523 

edness  and  despair,  oppressed,  poverty-stricken,  literally 
"having  no  hope  and  without  God  in  the  world,"  knowing 
nothing  of  anything  better,  but  knowing  well  their  own 
bitterness  and  sorrow.  Suddenly,  they  heard  the  clear, 
sweet  invitation  of  the  gospel,  telling  them  of  pardon,  de- 
liverance, and  peace.  Eagerly  and  trustfully  as  children 
they  came  and  found  rest  for  their  souls.  Nowhere  else  in 
the  world  is  there  a  more  significant  illustration  of  the  gos- 
pel's response  to  human  need  and  the  value  of  personal  work. 
Making  all  due  allowance  for  other  causes  and  the  excep- 
tional conditions  that  undoubtedly  existed,  the  fact  remains 
that  the  Divine  Power  has-  moved  in  a  remarkable  way 
upon  the  Land  of  the  Morning  Calm.  One  does  not  wonder 
that  Mrs.  Isabella  Bird  Bishop  said  that  the  mission  work 
there  was  the  most  impressive  she  saw  in  any  part  of  the 
world. 


CHAPTER  XXXII 
KOREAN  CHRISTIANS 

THE  Korean  Christians  deeply  interest  the  student  of 
religious  life  and  activity.  The  criticism  has  been  made 
that  their  profession  is  of  doubtful  stability  because  it  is 
alleged  to  be  simply  a  mass  movement  of  peasants,  emo- 
tional in  character,  and  with  no  sufficient  basis  in  knowledge. 
Will  their  faith  be  as  virile  and  permanent  as-  that  of  the 
more  tenacious  Chinese  and  the  more  philosophical  East 
Indian  ?  The  Koreans  are  turning  to  God  from  the  depths 
of  utter  worldly  despair,  accepting  the  gospel  as  their  only 
hope  and  help  in  this  world.  Will  they  give  it  the  same 
supremacy  in  their  lives  when  their  material  conditions 
improve  and  life  has  in  it  more  of  the  opportunities  and 
ambitions  which  characterize  other  peoples?  It  is  true 
that  there  is  a  large  emotional  element  in  Korean  Christi- 
anity; but  why  should  we  distrust  the  work  on  that  ac- 
count? The  heart  is  quite  as  likely  to  be  right  as  the 
head.  Repentance,  faith,  and  devotion  which  enlist  the 
profoundest  emotions  of  the  soul  are  surely  not  to  be  slighted. 
Love  is  one  of  the  strongest  of  human  passions;  and  when 
it  is  centred  in  Christ,  it  flowers  into  rare  beauty. 

It  must  be  admitted,  however,  that  the  factor  of  tempera- 
ment exposes  the  Korean  churches  to  special  peril.  Emo- 
tions that  are  quickly  aroused  sometimes  subside  with  equal 
quickness.  A  comparison  of  the  number  of  accessions  with 
the  net  gain  in  membership  through  a  series  of  years  shows 
that  there  have  been  serious  losses  in  the  Korean  churches. 
Of  course  there  are  leakages  in  every  organization  of  human 
beings.  Not  all  men  and  women  who  join  any  society  in 
any  land  remain  in  it  all  their  lives.  But  the  percentage  of 
those  who  lapse  in  Korea  is  higher  than  in  some  other  lands. 
This  does  not  necessarily  argue  instability  of  the  church, 

524 


KOREAN  CHRISTIANS  525 

for  one  should  remember  that  there  is  less  family,  social,  and 
financial  loss  in  confessing  Christ  in  Korea  than  in  China, 
India,  and  Mohammedan  lands.  Where  little  opposition 
or  sacrifice  is  involved,  it  is  easier  to  identify  oneself  with 
Christianity  than  in  a  country  where  one  knows  that  if  he 
announces  that  he  has  become  a  Christian  he  will  probably 
be  disowned  by  his  family,  ostracized  by  the  community, 
and  bitterly  persecuted  by  powerful  priests.  I  am  aware 
that  there  have  been  times  when  these  obstacles  have  been 
encountered  in  Korea,  and  that  they  are  occasionally  en- 
countered now.  I  have  described  in  another  chapter  the 
fear  of  some  of  the  Koreans  that  a  confession  of  Christianity 
will  expose  them  to  closer  espionage  by  the  Japanese  police. 
Whether  this  fear  is  ill  or  well  grounded,  it  undoubtedly 
has  existed  at  various  tunes.  Nevertheless,  the  generaliza- 
tion holds  that  the  barriers  to  church  membership  are  less 
formidable  hi  Korea  than  in  many  other  mission  fields. 
This  consideration,  taken  in  connection  with  the  Korean 
temperament,  helps  one  to  understand  why  some  Koreans 
profess  conversion  only  to  drop  out  of  sight  a  few  years 
later. 

The  missionaries  do  everything  in  their  power  to  guard 
against  this  evil.  It  is  true  that  the  Koreans  are  coming 
to  the  church  in  large  numbers;  but  it  is  not  true  that  they 
are  received  in  a  mass.  Missionaries  deal  with  each  in- 
dividual separately,  carefully  examining  him  and  testing 
him  as  a  catechumen  for  an  average  period  of  a  year.  He 
is  not  enrolled  as  a  communicant  until  he  shows  reasonable 
familiarity  with  the  Bible,  maintains  family  prayers,  con- 
tributes in  proportion  to  his  means,  and  lives  a  fairly  con- 
sistent Christian  life.  If  membership  in  American  churches 
were  confined  to  Christians  of  that  type,  would  the  enrol- 
ment be  as  large  as  it  is  now?  It  is  misleading  to  assert 
that  Korean  converts  are  not  grounded  in  the  faith  and  that 
they  are  not  receiving  an  education.  I  have  referred  else- 
where to  the  congregational  Bible  schools  every  Sunday, 
and  to  the  Bible  training-classes  which  are  held  at  all  the 
principal  stations.  These  special  means  of  instruction  are 


526  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

supplemented  by  preaching  services  and  by  daily  study  in 
the  homes.  If  there  are  any  other  Christians  in  the  world 
who  are  more  familiar  with  the  Bible  than  the  Korean  Chris- 
tians, I  have  not  had  the  privilege  either  of  meeting  them 
or  of  hearing  about  them. 

Another  criticism  frequently  urged  is  that  the  Christian 
movement  in  Korea  is  largely  political  and  influenced  by 
expectation  of  financial  gain.  Political  conditions  undoubt- 
edly made  the  progress  of  the  gospel  more  easy  than  in  some 
other  lands.  The  Christian  movement,  however,  attained 
large  proportions  before  the  Japanese  occupation  and  while 
the  Koreans  were  under  their  own  government.  I  have 
already  referred  to  the  efforts  of  the  revolutionary  party, 
some  years  ago,  to  utilize  the  churches  and  the  Young  Men's 
Christian  Association.  But  the  missionaries  and  the  Ko- 
rean Christian  leaders  promptly  and  decisively  put  a  stop 
to  this.  The  Koreans  now  clearly  understand  that  the 
Christian  Church  and  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  have  no  relation 
whatever  to  politics,  and  that  those  who  wish  to  foment 
revolutionary  ideas  must  do  so  outside  of  the  churches. 

The  flimsiness  of  the  charge  that  Korean  Christians  are 
influenced  by  the  expectation  of  financial  gain  is  shown  by 
the  well-known  facts  that,  though  they  are  among  the  most 
poverty-stricken  people  in  the  world,  they  support  a  large 
majority  of  their  churches,  chapels,  and  the  primary  schools, 
which,  as  a  rule,  are  associated  with  the  congregations; 
that  an  insignificant  fraction  of  them  are  employed  by  the 
missionaries;  and  that  self-support  has  been  pressed  to  as 
great  an  extent  as  in  any  mission  field  in  the  world.  The 
wage  of  a  Korean  laborer  is  about  twenty  cents  a  day,  as 
compared  with  $2  to  $3  in  the  United  States.  Imagine, 
then,  the  significance  of  gifts  and  fees  in  a  single  year  aggre- 
gating yen  356,995.  In  one  mission  the  contributions  in- 
creased from  yen  6,583  in  1903  to  yen  77,335  in  1908,  and 
yen  193,304  in  1918.  The  original  building  of  the  First 
Presbyterian  Church  of  Pyengyang  cost  4,000  yen.  The 
Mission  Board  agreed  to  provide  half  of  this  sum  if  the 
people  would  furnish  the  other  half.  But  on  a  memorable 


KOREAN  CHRISTIANS  527 

February  Sunday,  the  Christians  surprised  and  delighted 
the  missionaries  by  subscribing  3,000  yen,  and  a  few  years 
later  they  actually  raised  and  refunded  to  the  Mission  Board 
the  remaining  1,000. 

A  visitor  interested  in  Sunday-school  work  was  troubled 
because  he  found  what  seemed  to  be  a  small  proportion  of 
children  in  the  Sunday-schools.  The  fact  was  that  prac- 
tically the  whole  congregation  of  each  group  of  believers 
was  in  Sunday-school  studying  the  Bible.  All  the  boys  and 
girls  were  there;  but,  scattered  through  the  great  assem- 
blages with  their  parents,  they  were  not  so  readily  noticed 
by  an  American  traveller  to  whom  a  Sunday-school  meant  a 
gathering  of  children  with  only  a  handful  of  adults.  Korea 
has  the  best  kind  of  Sunday-schools  for  they  are  congrega- 
tional Bible  schools.  Official  reports  show  that  the  Sunday- 
school  membership  is  about  three  and  a  half  times  the 
communicant  membership  of  the  church,  and  is  90  per 
cent  of  the  total  number  of  communicants  and  adherents 
combined. 

Sunday  is  the  great  day  of  the  week  to  these  Korean 
Christians.  Their  best  clothes  have  been  carefully  laun- 
dered for  the  occasion,  and  they  flock  to  the  church,  their 
clean  white  figures  lending  a  picturesquely  attractive  touch 
to  the  squalid  aspect  of  a  Korean  village.  The  edifice  is 
soon  crowded.  All  Korean  congregations  sit  on  the  floor, 
the  men  with  their  hats  on  and  the  sexes  divided  by  a  par- 
tition; the  preacher  standing  so  that  he  can  see  both  sexes. 
When  the  attendance  is  so  large  as  to  require  more  room, 
the  minister  asks  the  congregation  to  rise,  to  move  forward, 
and  to  sit  down  again.  Few  churches  in  Europe  and  Amer- 
ica have  an  average  attendance  at  public  worship  as  large 
as  their  reported  membership.  But  a  typical  mission  in 
Korea  reports  the  average  attendance  at  church  services  as 
two  and  nine-tenths  times  its  communicant  membership.  . 

As  for  prayer,  the  family  altar  is  the  rule  rather  than  the 
exception,  and  few  Christians  would  think  of  eating  a  meal 
without  asking  the  blessing  of  God.  The  report  of  the 
Korean  clerk  of  a  Presbytery  for  a  recent  year  included  the 


528  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

following:  "Individual  Christians  have  grown  in  their  per- 
sonal prayer  life.  The  Morning  Watch  has  grown  the  past 
few  years  until  many  churches  have  the  daybreak  prayer- 
meetings  in  the  church  buildings.  Some  have  never  missed 
the  Morning  Watch  a  single  day  in  eight  years,  and  this 
early  tryst  with  the  Lord  has  brought  a  hundredfold  bless- 
ing to  individuals  and  to  churches.  The  mid-week  prayer 
meetings,  of  course  [mark  the  words:  "of  course"],  are  at- 
tended by  all  Christians.  There  have  been  special  prayer- 
meetings.  Also  the  universal  Week  of  Prayer  was  well 
observed.  Besides  these,  there  have  been  prayer-meetings 
on  the  roadside,  in  the  inns,  hi  prisons,  and  on  the  moun- 
tains where  God  has  given  the  children  of  the  North  great 
comfort  and  inspiration." 

The  mid-week  prayer-meetings  are  notable  characteristics 
of  Korean  religious  life.  The  meeting  in  Pyongyang  is 
probably  the  largest  in  the  world,  the  attendance  rarely 
falling  below  a  thousand,  and  often  rising  to  1,400.  I 
attended  a  prayer-meeting  in  the  Yun  Mot  Kol  Church 
in  Seoul.  It  was  a  dark,  rainy  night.  A  Korean  was  to 
lead,  and  the  people  did  not  know  that  a  traveller  from  the 
West  would  be  present;  but  I  found  about  1,000  Christians 
assembled.  It  would  be  extraordinary  if  1,200  American 
church  members  came  out  on  prayer-meeting  night  in  any 
city  in  the  United  States,  but  1,200  people  filled  the  Syen- 
chyun  Church  the  evening  we  spent  there.  It  is  worth 
going  far  to  hear  Korean  Christians  pray.  They  bow  with 
their  faces  to  the  floor  and  pour  out  praise,  confession,  and 
supplication  as  those  who  know  what  it  is  to  have  daily 
audience  with  God.  This  spirit  of  prayer  and  Bible  study 
pervades  their  daily  lives. 

The  Reverend  F.  S.  Miller  writes  from  Chungju:  "We 
are  in  a  mountain  village  in  a  rocky  gully  at  the  foot  of 
Yellow  Crane  Mountain.  These  people  appreciate  the  light 
and  joy  that  the  gospel  brings  into  their  dark  homes.  They 
have  time  to  think  and  pray  and  study  during  the  winter. 
The  little  bands  of  Christians  scattered  through  the  moun- 
tains have  a  common  bond  of  union  with  each  other  and 


KOREAN  CHRISTIANS  529 

with  the  great  church  out  in  the  world,  a  bond  that  gives 
them  a  new  vision,  a  new  life.  We  are  levelling  off  the 
south  end  of  our  hill  for  a  hospital.  As  I  walked  over  the 
site  the  other  day,  I  noticed  a  niche  in  the  bank,  and  that 
it  contained  four  Testaments  and  hymn-books.  Where  in 
America  do  you  find  a  band  of  workers  taking  Testaments 
and  hymn-books  to  work  with  them?  As  I  stood  thinking 
these  things  over,  the  men  came  around  the  bank,  laid 
down  their  shovels  and  picks  and  asked  me  to  lead  their 
'rest-time  prayer-meeting.'  Perhaps  only  half  of  them 
were  Christians,  but  all  sat  in  respectful  silence  and  bowed 
then*  heads  in  prayer." 

There  is  something  deeply  moving  about  the  zeal  of  these 
Korean  Christians.  A  deacon,  who  had  attended  the  Syen- 
chyun  men's  Bible  study  conference,  on  his  way  back  came 
toward  evening  to  a  mountain  pass.  As  it  was  the  evening 
for  the  regular  mid-week  service,  he  wanted  to  cross  and 
worship  in  a  little  gathering  on  the  other  side.  He  started 
over,  but  night  came  on,  he  lost  his  way,  and  fell  into  a 
snow  bank,  where  he  perished.  When  his  body  was  found, 
it  was  in  the  attitude  of  prayer.  Investigation  revealed  the 
fact  that  he  had  left  the  inn  that  morning  without  breakfast 
as  he  had  used  up  all  his  money,  so  that  hunger  and  weari- 
ness had  lessened  his  power  of  resistance  to  the  bitter  cold. 

The  following  extracts  from  letters  from  three  different 
parts  of  Korea  are  samples  of  scores  that  I  might  cite  from 
my  correspondence:  "The  men's  class  which  has  just  closed 
was  attended  by  500  men.  They  came  from  all  parts  of  the 
Province.  The  spirit  was  fine.  Two  hundred  and  fifty 
men  pledged  enough  days  of  preaching  to  equal  the  work 
of  one  man  for  nine  years,  and  a  large  body  of  men  pledged 
themselves  to  begin  each  day  with  the  petition:  'What  wilt 
Thou  have  me  do  to-day?"1 

Another  letter  says:  "The  Church  is  waking  up  to  a 
strenuous  effort  to  take  the  gospel  to  every  house  and  every 
man  and  woman  this  year.  At  a  circuit  class  which  I  held 
for  a  week,  250  were  present,  all  staying  till  the  close  of  the 
last  session.  One  evening  was  given  to  the  subject  of  per- 


530  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

sonal  work,  and  an  opportunity  for  pledging  a  number  of 
days'  work  during  the  year  resulted  in  an  aggregate  of  2,700 
days  of  preaching  pledged.  The  helpers  who  had  no  time 
of  their  own  to  give  pledged  each  half  a  month's  salary. 
An  ox-load  of  4,000  copies  of  St.  Mark's  Gospel  was  sent  to 
me  during  the  class,  and  in  less  than  half  an  hour  they 
were  all  gone.  I  had  not  sufficient  to  supply  the  de- 
mand." 

Another  missionary  writes:  "I  have  just  returned  from 
a  class  where  there  were  1,400  present.  Three  thousand 
three  hundred  copies  of  St.  Mark's  Gospel  were  purchased 
by  the  Christians  to  give  away  in  their  preaching  to  unbe- 
lievers. After  an  address  on  the  subject  of  tithing,  several 
hundred  decided  hereafter  to  give  a  tenth.  At  the  close  of 
a  sermon  over  400  stood  up  and  solemnly  dedicated  them- 
selves wholly  to  the  Lord.  A  colporteur,  while  coming  into 
the  city  from  ten  miles  out,  counted  400  men  who  had  re- 
ceived a  Gospel.  Men  coming  in  from  churches  where  they 
were  having  a  week  of  Bible  study  say  that  the  churches 
are  crowded  with  new  believers.  In  some  instances  the 
congregations  are  doubled,  and  people  are  standing  outside 
the  doors  listening  to  the  Gospel." 

One  more  letter  may  be  cited:  "The  Methodist  Confer- 
ence was  a  most  enthusiastic  one.  The  159  men  who  were 
present  pledged  some  3,000  days  during  the  next  three 
months.  At  Chairyung  the  training  class  pledged  during 
the  next  three  months  over  5,000  days.  We  have  secured 
from  the  British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society  a  special  copy 
of  St.  Mark's  Gospel  that  is  being  printed  in  large  quan- 
tities. These  will  be  sold  to  Christians  who  will  take  them, 
and  with  a  word  of  prayer  and  advice  give  them  to  their 
friends.  The  Society  first  ordered  100,000,  and  then  cabled 
to  make  it  200,000.  Finding  the  orders  were  nearly  300,000, 
the  edition  was  made  400,000.  We  expect  considerably 
over  a  million  of  these  Gospels  will  be  distributed  during  the 
year,  and  a  determined  effort  will  be  made  to  see  that  every 
household  in  Korea  during  this  year  hears  the  story  of  Christ 
in  an  intelligent  manner.  The  whole  country  will  be  dis- 


KOREAN  CHRISTIANS  531 

tricted,  and  in  some  way  or  other  every  house  will  be 
reached." 

At  the  close  of  a  conference  for  the  training  of  lay  work- 
ers, when  the  men  were  asked  to  consider  the  claims  of 
Christian  service,  178  of  the  finest  men  in  the  north  dedi- 
cated their  lives  to  the  ministry. 

One  does  not  wonder  that,  when  a  certain  critic  asserted 
that  "the  Korean  Christians  are  on  a  low  level,  and  that 
perhaps  four-fifths  of  those  who  are  enrolled  will  have  to 
be  sifted  out,"  Doctor  John  R.  Mott,  who  has  probably 
seen  as 'much  of  Christians  in  various  lands  as  any  living 
man,  replied:  "I  cannot  agree  with  him  in  his  estimate  of 
the  Korean  Christians.  I  regard  them  to  be  in  advance  of 
the  first  generation  of  Christians  of  most  of  the  non-Chris- 
tian countries  which  I  have  visited.  Moreover,  they  put 
to  shame  a  multitude  of  the  Christians  of  the  West  in  more 
than  one  respect." 

Nor  is  the  thought  of  the  Korean  Christians  confined  to 
their  immediate  neighborhoods.  One  of  the  seven  men 
ordained  September  17,  1907,  Yi  Ki  Poung,  was  set  aside 
as  a  missionary  to  Quelpart,  the  large  island  about  fifty 
miles  off  the  southern  coast,  whose  population  of  approx- 
imately a  hundred  thousand  has  long  had  a  bad  name. 
It  is  interesting  to  note  that  this  first  Korean  missionary 
was  a  man  who  stoned  the  Reverend  Samuel  A.  Moffett 
during  the  latter's  first  visit  to  Pyengyang,  in  1889. 

The  Korean  churches  had  been  conducting  Christian 
work  for  some  years  among  the  Chinese  in  Korea,  and  when 
a  Korean  Board  of  Foreign  Missions  was  organized  in  1907 
it  at  once  began  to  plan  for  missionary  work  in  China. 
The  church  leaders  were  stirred  as  they  learned  of  its  vast 
Unevangelized  population,  and  they  felt  that  their  prox- 
imity, their  knowledge  of  the  Chinese  ideographs,  the  his- 
toric relations  of  the  two  countries,  and  Korea's  indebted- 
ness to  China  for  its  civilization  and  literature,  combined 
to  reinforce  the  missionary  obligation  which  they  held  to 
be  binding  upon  them  as  well  as  upon  Western  Christians. 
They  realized  that  the  Chinese  had  long  regarded  Koreans 


532  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

as  a  small  and  inferior  people,  but  their  consecration  was 
illustrated  by  a  prayer  that  a  missionary  happened  to 
overhear  in  a  church  service:  "0  Lord,  we  are  a  despised 
people,  the  weakest  nation  on  the  earth.  But  thou  art  a 
God  who  choosest  the  despised  things.  Wilt  thou  use  this 
nation  to  show  forth  Thy  glory  in  Asia !"  In  1912,  negotia- 
tions were  opened  with  the  Chinese  Presbytery  in  the 
province  of  Shantung  regarding  the  advisability  of  sending 
Korean  missionaries  to  China.  The  Presbytery  welcomed 
the  offer  of  co-operation,  and  the  outcome  was  the  com- 
missioning of  three  Korean  missionaries  to  open  a  station 
at  Lai-yang,  a  walled  city  about  eighty  miles  southwest  of 
Chefoo.  The  station  had  a  checkered  history  for  several 
years.  The  health  of  the  senior  member  broke  down,  and 
the  two  other  workers  became  discontented  and  went  back 
to  Korea.  It  looked  for  a  time  as  if  the  effort  would  prove 
a  failure.  The  Korean  General  Assembly,  however,  de- 
cided to  go  on.  Other  missionaries  were  appointed  and 
funds  raised  for  their  support.  Difficulties  have  been 
numerous,  and  the  work  has  not  been  as  successful  as  its 
projectors  had  hoped;  but  a  fairly  prosperous  church  at 
Lai-yang  has  been  developed,  and  the  Korean  churches  are 
warmly  interested  in  it  and  eager  to  develop  it. 

Meantime  the  attention  of  the  Korean  Christians,  par- 
ticularly in  the  northern  stations,  had  been  turned  to  the 
adjacent  region  in  Manchuria,  where  the  number  of  Korean 
immigrants  was  rapidly  becoming  large.  Korean  evangel- 
ists were  sent  to  work  among  then*  brethren  there,  and  to 
take  advantage  of  any  opportunities  that  might  arise  to 
preach  to  the  Chinese.  A  visitor  writes  that  he  happened 
to  be  in  Syenchyun  one  Sunday  evening  when  a  Korean 
evangelist,  who  had  just  returned  from  Siberia,  presented 
his  report.  He  had  been  very  successful  in  organizing 
groups  of  believers,  but  he  had  been  obliged  to  return  at  the 
end  of  six  months  because  the  500  yen  that  had  been  given 
him  by  the  church  had  been  exhausted,  although  he  had 
used  it  prudently;  a  statement  which  was  confirmed  by 
an  American  missionary  who  had  audited  his  accounts. 


KOREAN  CHRISTIANS  533 

After  the  meeting  had  closed  and  many  of  the  members 
had  gone  home,  the  Korean  pastor  exclaimed:  "Oh,  must 
we  drop  this  work  for  lack  of  money?"  and  he  broke  down 
in  tears.  A  voice  in  the  rear  of  the  church  called  out: 
"To  comfort  the  heart  of  the  pastor,  I'll  give  five  yen  to 
start  a  subscription  to  continue  the  Siberian  work  six 
months."  Other  pledges  of  varying  amounts  quickly  fol- 
lowed, until  another  500  yen  had  been  secured.  Then  those 
poor  Koreans,  not  one  of  whom  had  an  income  of  500  yen 
a  year,  shouted  for  joy,  sung  "Praise  God  from  whom  all 
blessings  flow,"  and  went  out  into  the  darkness  and  rain 
to  their  humble  homes  with  a  great  happiness  in  their 
hearts.  The  next  day,  the  congregation  voted  to  send  an 
ordained  minister  to  Siberia  as  its  own  representative,  pay- 
ing his  salary  and  providing  him  a  house;  and  in  order 
that  no  one  might  imagine  that  this  action  would  interfere 
with  its  pledges  toward  the  support  of  the  missionary  work 
of  the  Presbytery  on  Quelpart  and  in  Vladivostok,  the  con- 
gregation also  voted  to  increase  its  contributions  to  these 
objects  by  10  per  cent. 

There  is  something  striking  about  the  transformation 
that  Christianity  effects  in  these  Koreans.  George  Kennan 
regarded  the  vain,  lazy,  bigoted  Korean  yangban  "as  ap- 
parently an  absolutely  impossible  person  to  do  anything 
with  or  make  anything  out  of,"  but  he  declared  that  mis- 
sionary schools,  Christian  education,  and  foreign  travel  have 
transformed  some  of  them  into  intelligent,  trustworthy,  and 
patriotic  men,  and  he  thought  that  if  they  could  be  recon- 
structed, there  was  hope  for  others  and  for  the  next  genera- 
tion. 

Mr.  F.  A.  Mackenzie,  the  English  war  correspondent, 
writes:  "Some  travellers  are  accustomed  to  sneer  at  mis- 
sionary converts.  Usually  these  are  people  who  have  never 
travelled  further  than  treaty  ports,  and  who  consider  that 
a  few  days'  stay  at  a  semi-Europeanized  town  like  Shanghai 
or  Yokohama  enables  them  to  speak  as  authorities  on 
heathen  lands  forever  after.  Those  of  us  who  have  pene- 
trated into  the  interior  of  the  great  dark  continents  know 


534  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

better.  I  was  with  one  of  the  Japanese  armies  in  1904  in  its 
advance  into  Manchuria.  Among  my  servants  were  several 
native  Korean  converts.  Early  in  the  spring,  it  was  neces- 
sary for  me  to  communicate  with  some  associates  at  Chef oo, 
in  China.  I  called  one  of  my  'boys'  and  told  him  to  set 
out  from  Antung  and  reach  the  other  side.  He  had  to 
cross  the  Yellow  Sea  by  himself,  escape  the  mines  around 
Port  Arthur,  land  in  China,  obtain  money  for  me,  and 
return.  The  'boy'  had  never  been  outside  his  native 
country  before.  He  disappeared,  and  for  weeks  nothing 
was  heard  of  him.  Then,  one  day,  when  our  army  had 
advanced  far  up  into  Manchuria,  I  was  riding  along,  when 
a  bronzed,  ragged,  weary  figure  ran  up  to  my  horse,  with 
one  cry  on  his  lips:  'Master,  Master !'  My  'boy'  had  come 
back.  He  took  me  on  one  side  and  showed  me  a  heavy 
package  of  money  in  his  inner  dress.  He  had  been  de- 
layed. His  own  funds  were  exhausted.  He  had  starved 
and  suffered  desperately.  Yet  it  had  never  crossed  his 
mind  to  give  up  his  work  or  to  help  himself  to  my  money. 
That  was  a  missionary  boy.  I  know  too  much  of  what  the 
missionaries  actually  do  to  have  anything  but  a  profound 
respect  for  their  work." 

The  Christians  are  fearless  in  their  devotion.  We  have 
seen  to  what  extent  the  history  of  early  Christianity  in 
Korea  abounds  in  accounts  of  martyrdoms  which  the  be- 
lievers could  have  escaped  by  recanting  their  faith.  Such 
dangers  have  now  passed;  but  ever  and  anon  some  incident 
shows  that  the  spirit  of  the  modern  Korean  Christian  is  as 
devoted  as  that  of  his  predecessors.  The  teachers  and 
students  at  Syenchyun,  who  were  arrested  by  the  Japanese 
police  at  the  time  of  the  "Korean  Conspiracy  Case,"  were 
not  told  what  they  had  been  arrested  for,  and  supposed  it 
was  because  they  were  Christians.  But  on  their  arrival 
in  Seoul,  as  they  were  driven  in  chains  and  handcuffs  through 
the  streets  to  the  prison,  they  lustily  sung  the  hymn,  "Glory 
to  His  Name." 

Not  without  humor  are  some  of  the  manifestations  of 
fidelity.  When  the  Christians  believed  that  the  Japanese 


KOREAN  CHRISTIANS  535 

were  imprisoning  church  members  on  account  of  their  re- 
ligion, a  Korean  evangelist  connected  with  the  Methodist 
Mission,  anxiously  said  to  a  missionary:  "Moksa,  there 
must  be  something  wrong  in  our  Methodist  Church.  I  fear 
we  are  lacking  in  faith.  There  are  thirty-seven  Presby- 
terians in  jail  and  only  one  Methodist.  I  fear  the  Lord 
does  not  count  us  worthy  to  suffer  persecution." 

Our  first  meeting  with  the  Korean  Christians  will  not  soon 
be  forgotten.  The  trip  across  the  narrow  strait  between 
Japan  and  Korea  was  decidedly  rough.  We  had  crossed 
the  Pacific  with  such  comfort  that  we  had  fondly  imagined 
ourselves  to  be  good  sailors.  But  that  comparatively  short 
passage  of  a  single  night  brought  us  to  grief.  The  winds 
and  tides  that  alternately  sweep  back  and  forth  between 
the  Japan  and  Eastern  seas  usually  keep  the  Korea  Strait 
rather  tumultuous,  and  this  time  a  recent  storm  had  stirred 
up  a  furious  sea.  All  night  our  little  Japanese  steamer 
pitched  and  rolled  through  the  assaulting  waves,  while 

Well,  I  told  the  "boy"  to  call  us  an  hour  before  reaching 
Fusan.  He  smiled  assent  and  called  us  ten  minutes  before 
instead  of  sixty.  Hastily  tumbling  out  of  our  berths  and 
donning  our  clothes,  we  jumped  into  a  waiting  sampan 
with  the  hospitable  missionaries  who  had  already  boarded 
the  steamer.  It  was  nearly  half  past  ten  o'clock  and  there 
was  no  time  for  breakfast,  nor  had  we  appetite  for  it.  So 
we  proceeded  at  once  to  the  building  where  the  Korean 
Christians  had  been  for  some  time  awaiting  us,  troops  of 
them  having  met  us  at  the  foot  of  the  hill  and  escorted  us 
up  the  road.  The  seasickness  from  which  we  had  just  risen 
was  not  the  best  preparation  for  speaking;  but  after  a 
felicitous  address  of  welcome  by  one  of  the  Koreans,  a  hun- 
dred voices  rose  in  a  song  of  praise.  Such  congregational 
singing !  It  was  so  hearty  and  yet  so  truly  worshipful  that 
it  was  a  physical  and  spiritual  tonic.  Not  a  line  could  we 
understand,  till  suddenly  from  out  of  the  unintelligible 
words  there  fairly  leaped  two  that  we  recognized:  "Jesus, 
Hallelujah ! "  There  being  no  Korean  equivalents  for  them, 


536  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

the  missionaries  had  taught  the  people  to  use  the  terms  so 
familiar  to  us.  We  forgot  our  seasickness  as  those  wondrous 
words  sounded  in  our  ears.  One  could  have  had  no  more 
inspiring  theme,  and  so  I  spoke  on  the  meaning  of  "Jesus, 
Hallelujah!" 

Wherever  we  went  in  Korea  nothing  stirred  us  more 
deeply  than  the  singing  of  the  Korean  Christians.  A 
stranger  in  a  strange  land  enters  a  room  filled  with  strange 
people,  who  greet  him  in  a  strange  tongue  and  then  begin 
to  sing  a  strange  tune.  The  voices  are  not  melodious  and 
they  do  not  always  keep  the  key.  But  the  singing  plainly 
voices  the  aspirations  of  a  fervent  and  genuine  experience. 
Those  Koreans  sing  as  they  pray — with  all  their  hearts. 
Unfamiliar  as  the  language  is,  the  visitor  is  thrilled  by  the 
exultant  ring  of  a  living,  joyous  faith.  And  the  mud  walls 
and  the  dark  faces  and  all  the  strange  surroundings  fade 
from  view,  and  one  feels  that  he  is  no  longer  among  strangers 
but  in  the  household  of  faith  and  love. 

I  have  since  journeyed  far  and  have  seen  many  places 
and  peoples.  But  there  still  lives  to  my  vision  the  humble 
chapels  on  those  Korean  hills,  with  worshipping  Koreans 
sitting  Oriental  fashion  on  the  floor.  I  can  see  their  faces 
light  up  as  I  spoke  to  them  of  Jesus  as  our  revelation  of  the 
love  of  God,  Jesus  as  our  Saviour  from  sin,  Jesus  as  our 
Friend  and  King,  Jesus  as  the  Giver  of  such  peace  and  joy 
that  there  is  no  word  so  appropriate  for  true  disciples  as 
"Hallelujah."  Even  as  I  write,  I  seem  to  hear  the  unison 
of^those  eager  voices  as,  in  glad  response  to  my  closing  re- 
quest, they  joined  me  in  repeating  the  words:  "Jesus,  Halle- 
lujah," and  then  with  the  reverent  petition  of  then*  leader 
as  he  prayed  for  us  all,  while  the  white-robed  worshippers 
bowed  with  their  faces  to  the  floor. 

A  visit  to  Korea  is  a  tonic  to  faith.  As  one  travels  through 
the  country,  facing  crowds  of  Christians  from  Fusan  to 
Syenchyun,  it  is  difficult  to  realize  that  Protestant  mis- 
sions in  Korea  date  only  from  1884,  and  that  the  great 
host  of  communicants  and  adherents  in  the  Pyengyang 
field  alone  began  with  the  baptism  of  a  handful  of  men  in 


KOREAN  CHRISTIANS  537 

January,  1894.  "Will  it  be  permanent?"  some  are  ask- 
ing. Well,  a  willingness  to  support  their-own  work  without 
dependence  upon  the  foreigner's  money,  an  eagerness  to 
extend  the  gospel  to  their  countrymen,  a  persistence  in 
Christian  fidelity  when  left  without  missionary  supervi- 
sion, and  a  patient  endurance  of  persecution — these  are 
surely  encouraging  indications  of  genuineness  of  purpose. 
Many  a  time  as  I  studied  the  movement  in  the  villages  of 
Korea,  it  seemed  to  me  that  the  Son  of  Man  was  again 
walking  upon  earth  and  calling  to  lowly  men:  "Follow  me," 
and  that  again  men  were  "straightway"  leaving  all  and  fol- 
lowing Him.  As  I  sat  in  their  lowly  chapels  and  com- 
muned with  them,  I  could  see  how  the  gospel  had  enlight- 
ened their  hearts  and  how  their  once  joyless  lives  now 
centred  in  the  Church  of  God  which  gave  them  their  only 
light  and  peace. 

Taking  Korean  Christians  as  a  whole,  the  facts  that  have 
been  stated  regarding  their  giving,  their  study  of  the  Bible, 
their  zeal  for  the  conversion  of  others,  and  the  consistency 
of  their  daily  lives,  should  protect  them  from  the  charge 
of  being  unintelligent  and  merely  emotional  Christians. 
Their  confession  of  heinous  sins  during  the  intensity  of  re- 
vivals has  been  cited  as  evidence  that  their  Christianity 
is  shallow.  It  is  odd  that  any  one  should  draw  such  a 
conclusion.  Penitence  of  heart  led  those  poor  Koreans  to 
confess  to  the  very  sins  which  notoriously  exist  among 
those  who  are  called  "Christians"  in  Europe  and  America. 
It  ill  becomes  travellers  from  countries  where  such  sins  are 
not  confessed  until  investigations  expose  them  to  criticise 
Christians  in  Korea  who  have  the  grace  to  confess  them 
voluntarily. 

For  myself,  I  cannot  withhold  the  tribute  of  my  confi- 
dence and  love  for  the  Korean  Christians.  I  met  them  in 
various  parts  of  the  country,  in  villages  and  cities,  churches 
and  homes;  and  everywhere  I  was  profoundly  impressed 
by  their  sincerity  and  devotion.  We  arrived  at  Chairyung 
about  dark  one  Saturday  evening,  after  a  journey  of  five 
hours  in  chairs  from  the  railway-station.  Tired  and  dusty, 


538  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

I  did  not  expect  to  meet  the  Christians  that  evening. 
Learning,  however,  that  many  of  them  had  assembled  in 
the  church,  I  went  over,  and  during  the  meeting  asked 
them  to  tell  me  in  their  own  way  what  they  found  in  Christ 
that  led  them  to  love  and  serve  him.  One  after  another 
the  men  rose  and  answered  my  question.  I  jotted  down 
their  replies,  and  find  the  following  in  my  note-book:  "De- 
liverance from  sin,"  "forgiveness,"  "peace,"  "eternal  life," 
"guidance,"  "strength,"  "power  to  do,"  "joy,"  "com- 
fort." Surely  those  earnest  Koreans  had  found  something 
of  value  in  Christ.  As  we  bowed  together  in  a  closing  prayer, 
my  heart  went  out  to  them  as  to  those  who,  with  fewer 
advantages  than  I  had  enjoyed,  had  nevertheless  learned 
more  than  I  of  the  deep  things  of  God.  Childlike?  Yes, 
they  are;  but  it  was  the  Master  himself  who  said  to  his 
disciples,  and  through  them  to  us  all:  "Except  ye  turn  and 
become  as  little  children,  ye  shall  in  no  wise  enter  into  the 
kingdom  of  heaven." 


CHAPTER  XXXIII 

TYPE  AND  PROBLEMS  OF  KOREAN  RELIGIOUS 
THOUGHT 

ALTHOUGH  bordering  China  and  only  a  few  hours  from 
Japan,  with  tides  of  Chinese  and  Japanese  life  and  thought 
alternately  sweeping  back  and  forth  throughout  the  length 
of  the  country,  we  nevertheless  find  ourselves  in  a  different 
religious  atmosphere  when  we  enter  the  Christian  churches 
of  Korea.  Korean  temperament  is  quite  distinct  from  that 
of  China  and  Japan.  Less  stolid  and  materialistic  than 
the  Chinese,  less  alert  and  martial  than  the  Japanese,  the 
Korean  is  more  susceptible  and  trustful  than  either.  He 
responds  more  readily  to  suggestion  from  the  outside.  His 
heart  is  more  easily  touched  by  the  religious  message;  his 
faith  is  more  childlike,  and  his  spiritual  vision  more  un- 
troubled by  doubt.  He  came  to  Christianity  out  of  deeper 
sorrows  than  the  self-confident  Chinese  and  the  masterful 
Japanese.  The  missionaries  in  each  country  have  felt  that 
the  character  and  trend  of  the  native  mind  with  which  they 
had  to  deal  called  for  special  emphasis  upon  certain  theologi- 
cal doctrines,  which,  while  not  fundamentally  at  variance 
with  the  equally  evangelical  doctrines  that  the  other  body 
of  missionaries  were  emphasizing,  were  nevertheless  differ- 
ent. The  range  of  New  Testament  teaching  is  wide,  and 
each  national  group  of  Christians,  like  each  individual  be- 
liever, instinctively  appropriates  the  truths  which  impress 
them  as  best  adapted  to  their  needs.  The  oppressed,  de- 
spairing, impoverished,  emotional  Korean  approaches  Christ 
from  a  different  angle  than  the  proud,  ambitious,  and  all- 
conquering  Japanese.  Korean  and  Japanese  types  of  Chris- 
tianity are,  therefore,  as  different  as  the  Moravian  and 
Presbyterian  types  in  the  West. 

The  Japanese  Christian  subjects  the  teachings  of  the 
missionaries  to  his  own  independent  scrutiny.  The  Ko- 

539 


540  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

rean  Christian  takes  them  without  question.  The  former 
is  a  theological  progressive;  the  latter  a  theological  con- 
servative. No  questions  regarding  miracles  or  inspiration 
trouble  the  Korean  Christian.  He  implicitly  believes  every- 
thing that  he  has  been  taught  by  his  missionary  teachers. 
The  typical  missionary  of  the  first  quarter  century  after  the 
opening  of  the  country  was  a  man  of  the  Puritan  type.  He 
kept  the  Sabbath  as  our  New  England  forefathers  did  a 
century  ago.  He  looked  upon  dancing,  smoking,  and  card- 
playing  as  sins  in  which  no  true  follower  of  Christ  should 
indulge.  In  theology  and  biblical  criticism  he  was  strongly 
conservative,  and  he  held  as  a  vital  truth  the  premille- 
narian  view  of  the  second  coming  of  Christ.  The  higher 
criticism  and  liberal  theology  were  deemed  dangerous 
heresies.  In  most  of  the  evangelical  churches  of  America 
and  Great  Britain,  conservatives  and  liberals  have  learned 
to  live  and  work  together  in  peace;  but  in  Korea  the  few 
men  who  hold  "the  modern  view"  have  a  rough  road  to 
travel,  particularly  in  the  Presbyterian  group  of  missions. 

The  Korean  converts  naturally  reproduced  the  prevailing 
type.  The  result  was  a  Christian  experience  like  that  of 
Bunyan's  Pilgrim.  Salvation  was  an  escape  from  the  City 
of  Destruction.  Satan  was  not  a  rhetorical  expression,  but 
a  real  and  malignant  personage — "your  adversary"  who, 
"as  a  roaring  lion,  walketh  about  seeking  whom  he  may 
devour."  The  accounts  of  the  Garden  of  Eden,  the  ex- 
perience of  Jonah,  the  virgin  birth  of  our  Lord,  the  resur- 
rection of  Lazarus,  and  of  the  gates  of  pearls  and  streets  of 
pure  gold  in  the  Heavenly  City  were  taken  as  historical  de- 
scriptions of  actual  facts.  Nowhere  else  in  the  world  is  there 
a  higher  percentage  of  church  members  who  pray,  study 
the  Bible,  attend  devotional  services,  give  proportionately 
of  their  money,  and  manifest  evangelistic  zeal  in  spreading 
the  gospel;  and  nowhere  e^e  are  there  greater  strictness  of 
Sabbath  observance,  rigidity  of  doctrinal  conviction,  and 
inflexibility  of  opposition  to  anything  that  does  not  accord 
with  the  accepted  type. 

The  deficiencies  in  the  Korean  religious  type  are  a  cer- 


KOREAN  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT  541 

tain  lack  of  largeness  of  view  and  of  recognition  of  the  fact 
that  believers  of  equal  piety  and  loyalty  to  Christ  differ  in 
their  interpretation  of  the  Bible  and  in  the  degree  of  liberty 
that  should  be  permitted  in  matters  that  do  not  involve 
questions  of  right  or  wrong  but  merely  of  Christian  judg- 
ment and  expediency.  The  Korean  line  is  sharply  drawn. 
The  area  of  duty  in  both  doctrine  and  practice  is  strictly 
defined,  and  every  professing  Christian  who  does  not  keep 
within  it  is  counted  a  heretic.  Intensity  rather  than 
breadth  characterizes  the  typical  Korean  Christian.  In- 
tense in  advocacy  of  the  truth,  some  say;  intense  in  advo- 
cacy of  only  a  part  of  the  truth,  others  reply. 

Another  characteristic  of  Korean  Christianity  is  compara- 
tive indifference  to  the  social  application  of  the  gospel. 
The  thought  of  the  Korean  churches  is  fixed  on  the  next 
world.  The  present  world  is  regarded  as  so  utterly  lost 
that  it  cannot  be  saved  in  this  dispensation;  nor  is  it  be- 
lieved that  the  Divine  plan  contemplates  such  an  end. 
The  duty  of  the  church  now  is  to  preach  the  gospel  "for  a 
witness,"  to  gather  out  the  elect,  and  to  leave  the  world 
till  Christ  shall  return.  The  church  must  be  composed 
of  men  and  women  of  clean  lives;  but  efforts  to  clean  up 
the  community  and  to  bring  about  better  social  conditions 
are  regarded  as  a  use  of  time  and  strength  that  could  be 
more  usefully  employed  in  other  ways.  "What  are  you 
doing  in  the  way  of  social  reform  ?  "  a  Korea  missionary  was 
once  asked.  "Nothing,"  was  the  reply,  "we  are  too  busy 
preaching  the  gospel."  Some  Korea  missionaries  would 
emphatically  disavow  such  a  sweeping  statement,  and  with 
justice,  for  Christianity  in  Korea  has  done  many  things  to 
alleviate  suffering  and  to  secure  proper  treatment  for  the 
sick  and  defective  classes.  The  mission  hospitals  scattered 
over  the  country,  the  Home  for  Destitute  Children  in  Seoul, 
and  the  work  for  lepers  on  an  island  near  Fusan,  all  testify 
to  the  fact  that  the  missionaries  have  not  been  indifferent 
to  physical  suffering.  If  they  have  done  little  to  remedy 
bad  community  conditions  outside  of  the  membership  of 
the  churches,  it  should  be  borne  in  mind  that,  under  the 


542  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

old  political  regime,  the  Korean  officials  were  so  lazy,  cor- 
rupt, and  reactionary  that  the  missionaries  could  do  nothing 
with  them.  But  speaking  broadly,  and  making  due  allow- 
ance for  exceptional  missionaries  and  institutions,  the  gen- 
eral type  of  Korean  Christianity  is  individualistic  rather 
than  social.  The  world  is  a  sinking  ship,  and  the  best  that 
the  church  can  do  is  to  rescue  as  many  as  possible  of  the 
passengers.  The  once  popular  revival  hymn  expresses  the 
thought: 

"Pull  for  the  shore,  sailor; 
Pull  for  the  shore; 
Leave  the  poor  old  stranded  wreck, 
And  pull  for  the  shore." 

This  rescue  work  has  been  pressed  with  splendid  devo- 
tion, in  the  eager  hope  that  our  Lord  will  return  in  the  flesh 
in  the  immediate  future  and  set  up  his  earthly  kingdom. 
Education,  sanitation,  social  and  economic  conditions  were 
deemed  relatively  unimportant  in  such  an  emergency. 
The  mission  schools  were  to  be  limited  to  the  children  of 
the  church,  and  attempts  to  extend  their  benefits  to  the 
children  of  non-Christians  were  frowned  upon  as  tending 
to  carry  the  work  of  the  missions  beyond  their  proper  sphere. 
Even  the  hospitals,  which  are  deemed  so  essential  a  part 
of  missionary  work  in  many  other  fields,  were  long  regarded 
in  Korea  as  useful  merely  for  opening  doors  of  opportunity 
for  preaching;  and  when  they  were  no  longer  needed  for 
that  purpose,  some  missionaries  favored  their  continuance 
only  on  a  small  and  limited  scale.  Many  of  the  mission- 
aries have  now  passed  beyond  this  stage.  They  regard  the 
medical  work  with  justifiable  pride  as  a  legitimate  and 
powerful  missionary  agency,  and  they  welcome  to  their 
schools  the  children  of  non-Christian  parents  who  are  will- 
ing to  have  their  sons  and  daughters  receive  a  Christian 
education.  But  in  some  of  the  missions  this  freedom  was 
gained  at  great  cost.  Let  those  who  are  disposed  to  criti- 
cise the  missionaries  for  their  conservatism  remember  that 
even  in  America  and  Great  Britain  the  idea  of  the  social 


KOREAN  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT  543 

application  of  the  gospel  and  the  consequent  duty  of  the 
church  to  Christianize  the  social  order  is  comparatively 
new,  and  that  there  are  still  devout  Christians  in  the  West 
who  deem  such  effort  a  semi-heresy,  or  at  best  a  diversion 
of  precious  time  and  energy  from  the  more  pressing  task 
of  "preaching  the  gospel."  l 

The  revival  in  Pyongyang  which  culminated  in  January, 
1907,  illustrated  the  characteristics  of  Korean  temperament. 
It  was  attended  by  extraordinary  physical  and  mental 
manifestations — shouts,  groans,  violent  weeping,  falling 
upon  the  ground,  frothing  at  the  mouth,  and  paroxysms  of 
varying  intensity,  culminating  in  complete  insensibility. 
These  manifestations  were  attributed  by  many  persons  to 
the  conflict  between  Christ  and  the  evil  spirits  sent  by 
Satan  to  resist  the  gracious  work  of  God;  for  demon  posses- 
sion is  accepted  as  a  fact  in  Korea  as  it  was  in  the  first  cen- 
tury, and  the  absence  of  such  signs  at  other  times  and 
places  is  lamented  as  an  evidence  of  spiritual  decadence. 
It  is  hazardous  to  dogmatize  on  a  subject  of  which  we  know 
so  little.  It  is  historically  true,  however,  that  such  scenes 
have  been  usually  witnessed  when  a  simple-minded  emo- 
tional people  have  suddenly  been  brought  face  to  face  with 
the  tremendous  eternal  issues  of  sin  and  salvation,  heaven 
and  hell.  The  Reverend  Doctor  John  F.  Goucher,  of  Bal- 
timore, says  that  in  his  early  ministry  he  was  perplexed 
because  his  preaching  was  received  so  quietly  by  his  people; 
nobody  shouted  or  fainted  or  became  hysterical  even  when 
his  themes  were  of  the  most  searching  and  soul-stirring 
kind.  He  resolved  to  make  an  experiment.  Going  to 
some  ignorant  mountaineers  at  a  distance,  people  who  had 
been  wholly  beyond  the  reach  of  church  work,  he  persuaded 
them  to  attend  a  service.  Before  it  was  concluded,  men  and 
women  were  uncontrollably  excited;  groans  and  wailings 
filled  the  room;  strong  men  writhed  in  anguish,  and  some, 
jumping  into  the  air,  fell  insensible  to  the  floor,  foaming 
at  the  mouth.  Doctor  Goucher  became  convinced  that  the 

1 1  have  discussed  this  subject  more  fully  in  another  book — Rising  Churches 
in  Non-Christian  Lands,  pp.  155  seq. 


544  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

difference  was  not  in  him  or  in  his  message  but  in  his  con- 
gregations, and  that  given  the  same  conditions  anywhere — 
an  ignorant,  excitable  people  and  a  vivid  portrayal  of  the 
consequences  of  sin  and  the  pardon  offered  in  Christ — the 
same  results  would  follow.  If  this  theory  is  correct,  the 
presence  or  absence  of  such  signs  indicates  little  regarding 
the  genuineness  of  a  revival  but  much  regarding  the  state 
of  the  people.  Those  who  receive  the  gospel  with  like  sin- 
cerity may  differ  widely  in  their  external  manifestations  of 
feeling.  The  processes  and  results  may  be  genuine  in  both 
cases,  but  the  human  signs  may  be  quite  different. 

The  Korea  missionaries  made  earnest  efforts  to  hold  this 
abnormal  excitement  in  check.  They  saw  its  perils,  and 
yet  they  felt  obliged  to  be  cautious  about  rebuking  it,  for 
they  knew  that  they  were  dealing  with  the  very  real  religious 
experience  of  sincere  men  and  women,  however  extravagant 
it  might  appear  to  educated  and  self-controlled  foreigners. 
Those  in  whom  the  gospel  message  stirs  no  such  emotions 
may  well  hesitate  to  plume  themselves  upon  their  superi- 
ority. More  learning  and  reserve  they  undoubtedly  have, 
but  perhaps  a  shallower  experience  also.  It  is  not  alto- 
gether a  reason  for  self-satisfaction  if  we  have  become  so 
blase"  under  oft-repeated  preaching  of  the  truth  that  it  no 
longer  arouses  anything  more  than  a  languid  interest  in 
us.  The  facts  of  spiritual  life  and  death  do  not  become 
less  tremendous  or  significant  when  people  advance  in  so- 
called  civilization  and  culture. 

Recent  years  have  brought  severe  tests  upon  the  churches 
of  Korea.  The  period  of  isolation  and  seclusion  has  passed. 
The  once  "Hermit  Nation"  is  now  wide  open.  Through 
the  open  doors  a  variety  of  good,  bad,  and  indifferent 
influences  have  poured  in.  Steamships,  railways,  and 
telegraphs  have  brought  the  world  to  Korea.  New  condi- 
tions have  caused  economic  disturbances  and  readjustments. 
Opportunities  to  make  and  to  spend  money  delight  and 
bewilder  the  simple-hearted  Koreans.  A  tide  of  material- 
ism is  sweeping  over  the  country.  The  life  of  the  average 
Korean  is  no  longer  an  empty  one  apart  from  the  church, 


KOREAN  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT  545 

and  he  is  almost  intoxicated  by  the  inrush  of  new  ideas 
and  methods.  Will  the  early  evangelical  fervor  be  main- 
tained in  such  circumstances?  A  Korean  elder  expressed 
to  me  anxiety  on  this  point.  He  said  that  at  first  practically 
every  Christian  was  an  evangelist,  but  that  now  there  are 
some  who  are  content  with  Sunday  worship  and  prayer- 
meeting  attendance.  A  missionary  writes:  "One  result  of 
the  Japanese  occupation  is  that  pressure  of  business  is  very 
much  greater  upon  the  Koreans  than  it  used  to  be.  The 
Christians  are  so  occupied  with  worldly  affairs  that  they 
do  not  attend  our  Bible  classes  as  they  used  to  do.  I  do 
not  think  that  it  is  wholly  a  decrease  of  interest  or  dropping 
away  from  faith.  They  observe  and  gather  on  Sunday  as 
before  and  seem  to  be  leading  consistent  Christian  lives; 
but  they  do  not  have  the  week-day  leisure  that  they  once 
had.  It  will  take  some  years  for  the  church  to  adjust  it- 
self to  the  new  conditions."  Perhaps  the  leakage  in  church 
membership,  to  which  I  have  referred  on  a  preceding  page, 
may  be  due,  in  part  at  least,  to  these  considerations  as  well 
as  to  the  emotional  temperament  of  the  Koreans.  Some 
losses  are  inevitable  in  such  circumstances.  Churches  in 
many  lands  have  had  to  pass  through  such  a  period  of  transi- 
tion. Wherever  isolated  communities  have  been  suddenly 
brought  out  of  stagnant  seclusion  into  the  whirling  currents 
of  the  world,  readjustments  and  realignments  have  neces- 
sarily followed.  The  old  appeals  have  lost  some  of  their  force 
and  other  interests  have  imperatively  demanded  attention. 
The  changing  spirit  was  manifested  as  early  as  1910  in 
the  so-called  "Million  Campaign  for  Christ."  Never  was 
an  evangelistic  movement  more  carefully  planned;  never 
were  plans  more  systematically  carried  out.  City  dis- 
tricting, house-to-house  canvassing,  newspaper  advertising, 
handbill  and  tract  distributing,  earnest  preaching,  personal 
work  with  individuals — all  these  were  energetically  and 
skilfully  used  "along  the  most  approved  lines  of  western- 
world  revival  meetings."  Every  theatre  and  public  hall 
in  Seoul  was  engaged  for  the  month,  so  that  no  other  public 
meetings  or  entertainments  could  be  given  to  distract  at- 


546  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

tention.  A  column  a  day  was  secured  in  each  of  the  six 
daily  papers.  Every  family  in  the  city  was  visited  every 
day  for  six  days.  But  the  expected  response  was  not  forth- 
coming. There  were,  it  is  true,  largely  attended  meetings, 
and  many  Koreans  expressed  a  desire  to  become  Christians; 
but  the  net  results  were  not  what  had  been  expected.  From 
the  reports  of  several  stations  I  cull  such  statements  as  the 
following:  "We  did  all  that  men  could  do.  Many  Chris- 
tians received  an  inspiration  for  personal  work;  but  the 
congregations  show  no  increase  beyond  what  is  to  be  ex- 
pected each  year."  "The  church  was  filled  nightly  and 
between  400  and  500  professed  conversion;  but  almost  none 
of  them  can  be  found  now."  The  missionaries  were  dis- 
appointed, but  far  from  discouraged,  concluding  that  the 
most  effective  way  to  reach  and  hold  Koreans  was  "the 
man-to-man  method"  of  constant  individual  effort  supple- 
menting the  regular  services  of  the  churches. 

Difficulties  of  various  kinds  are  beginning  to  perplex  the 
Korean  Christian.  He  had  innocently  imagined  that  in 
these  later  days  all  white  men  were  Christians  like  the  mis- 
sionaries, and  he  has  learned  to  his  sorrow  that  many,  who 
proudly  refer  to  their  own  country  as  "Christian,"  and  to 
Korea  as  "heathen,"  are  really  irreligious  and,  in  some 
cases,  dissolute — brutal  in  their  treatment  of  Asiatics,  lustful 
in  their  relations  with  women,  and  blasphemous  in  their 
references  to  the  God  whom  the  Korean  believer  reveres. 

His  conception  of  Christianity,  too,  is  being  disturbed. 
The  happy,  radiant,  unsophisticated  believers,  trustful  as 
little  children,  and  accepting  the  Bible  in  the  most  literal 
sense  from  Genesis  to  Revelation,  are  receiving  the  dis- 
quieting knowledge  that  not  all  of  the  devoted  servants  of 
God  in  other  lands  interpret  the  Bible  as  they  have  been 
taught  to  interpret  it;  that  reverent  opinions  differ  as  to 
whether  the  accounts  of  the  Garden  of  Eden,  the  experi- 
ences of  Job  and  Jonah,  and  the  descriptions  of  hell  and 
the  heavenly  city  should  be  interpreted  literally  or  figura- 
tively; and  that  men  who  differ  regarding  these  and  other 
matters  are  equally  earnest  and  active  in  loving  and  serving 


KOREAN  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT  547 

Christ  as  their  Lord  and  Saviour.  At  first  the  Korean  is 
stunned.  Then  he  is  apt  to  become  intolerant  in  attitude 
toward  the  Christians  who  differ  with  him  and  to  imagine 
that  he  is  more  righteous  than  they;  or  else  he  goes  to  the 
other  extreme  and  loses  confidence  in  his  missionary  teachers. 
The  present  tendency  is  toward  the  former  course,  but  the 
result  is  disastrous  in  either  case.  How  to  guide  the  Ko- 
rean churches  in  this  period  of  inevitable  transition  and 
readjustment  is  a  difficult  and  delicate  problem. 

The  problem  of  missionary  relationship  to  the  native 
church  does  not  exist  in  Korea  in  the  advanced  form  in 
which  one  finds  it  in  Japan.  The  reasons  for  this  have 
been  discussed  in  other  chapters.  It  is  true  that  the  Ko- 
rean Christian  of  to-day  is  not  as  docile  under  missionary 
leadership  as  he  was  a  dozen  years  ago;  but  the  generaliza- 
tion still  holds  that  in  Japan  the  churches  dominate  the 
missionaries,  and  in  Korea  the  missionaries  dominate  the 
churches.  The  troubles  of  this  kind  that  the  Korea  mis- 
sionaries now  have  are  with  a  certain  wilf ulness  of  disposi- 
tion, a  child's  tendency  to  sudden  alternations  of  feeling — 
gusts  of  temper  and  excitability.  The  missionaries  are 
rightly  devolving  larger  responsibilities  upon  the  Korean 
church  leaders,  and  they  are  meeting  with  some  success  in 
doing  so;  but  as  one  missionary  rather  anxiously  put  it: 
"The  Koreans,  by  thousands  of  years  of  misrule,  are  like 
children.  Spiritually,  they  are  in  advance  of  many  Chris- 
tian nations;  but  they  lack  balance,  foresight,  the  essence 
of  self-government;  and  it  will  require  years  of  discipline 
to  form  it  in  them." 

Presbyterians,  with  what  some  regarded  as  an  excess  of 
caution,  deemed  it  prudent  to  defer  organization  of  churches 
until  there  was  suitable  material  for  officers.  When  quali- 
fied men  were  developed  and  the  larger  groups  were  formed 
into  churches,  these  churches  were  carried  with  no  other 
external  bond  of  union  than  the  Presbyterian  Council, 
which  was  formed  in  1889  of  representatives  of  the  four 
Presbyterian  missions.  This  body  acted  as  a  governing 
body  until  September  17, 1907,  when  the  independent  Union 


548  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

Presbyterian  Church  of  Korea  was  constituted,  with  thirty- 
three  missionaries  and  elders,  representing  thirty-eight 
churches,  under  authority  given  by  the  general  assemblies 
of  the  four  Presbyterian  Churches,  whose  missions  were 
united  in  the  General  Council  of  Missions  in  Korea — Ameri- 
can Presbyterian  North,  Presbyterian  South,  Canadian 
Presbyterian,  and  Australian  Presbyterian.  The  Presby- 
tery at  once  ordained  seven  Koreans  to  the  ministry,  and 
adopted  the  Confession  of  Faith  and  Form  of  Government 
which  were  adopted  by  the  Presbyterian  Church  in  India 
at  its  organization  in  1904,  taking  the  former  entire,  and  the 
latter  with  only  a  few  modifications.  With  the  growth  of 
the  church,  the  original  Presbytery  was  subdivided,  until 
six  presbyteries  united  in  forming  a  General  Assembly, 
which  held  its  first  meeting  in  September,  1912. 

The  missionaries  of  the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church  were 
also  conservative  in  ecclesiastical  procedure,  carrying  most 
of  their  Korean  converts  as  probationers  in  connection  with 
the  mission  for  a  considerable  period.  They  began  the 
formal  organization  of  churches  in  1888.  A  Mission  Con- 
ference was  constituted  in  1904,  but  it  was  not  set  apart  as 
a  fully  empowered  Annual  Conference  until  1908.  The 
creed  and  discipline  are  those  of  the  parent  church  in 
America.  It  is  now  a  strong  and  vigorous  body,  under  the 
leadership  of  an  able  American  bishop,  the  Reverend  Doctor 
Herbert  Welch,  and  it  is  energetically  developing  its  work 
and  institutions  among  the  three  millions  of  Koreans  who 
occupy  the  territory  which,  by  agreements  with  other  com- 
munions, is  regarded  as  the  special  field  of  the  Methodist 
Episcopal  Church  in  Korea.  At  the  meeting  of  the  Con- 
ference hi  1918,  Bishop  Welch  ordained  twenty-eight  Ko- 
reans to  the  ministry,  which  is  believed  to  be  the  largest 
number  of  ministers  admitted  at  one  time  to  any  annual 
conference  of  that  communion  anywhere  in  the  world. 
The  Southern  Methodists  organized  a  District  Confer- 
ence in  1897,  which  was  for  a  time  attached  to  their  confer- 
ence in  China,  but  which  is  now  a  full  Conference  with  seven 
districts  under  its  supervision. 


KOREAN  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT  549 

It  will  be  noted  that,  with  the  exception  of  the  com- 
paratively small  mission  of  the  Church  of  England,  the  mis- 
sionaries and  churches  in  Korea  are  divided  into  two  main 
denominational  groups,  Methodist  and  Presbyterian;  the 
former  representing  a  union  of  two  Methodist  bodies,  and 
the  latter  of  four  Presbyterian  bodies.  The  union  in  each 
group  is  complete,  and  in  some  cases  finds  outward  expres- 
sion in  institutions,  such  as  the  college  and  theological 
seminary  in  Pyengyang  supported  by  the  Presbyterian 
missions,  and  the  theological  seminary  in  Seoul  supported 
by  the  Methodist  missions.  Federated  relations  between 
the  two  denominational  groups  have  existed  since  1904, 
when  the  General  Council  of  Evangelical  Missions  in  Korea 
was  formed,  whose  aim  was  announced  to  be  "co-operation 
in  mission  efforts  and  eventually  the  organization  in  Korea 
of  but  one  native  evangelical  church."  Negotiations  look- 
ing toward  such  a  union  have  been  carried  on  in  a  tentative 
way,  but  their  consummation  has  been  delayed  not  only 
by  the  difficulties  which  beset  organic  union  elsewhere, 
but  by  differences  in  mission  policies  and  methods,  par- 
ticularly in  educational  work  and  in  attitude  toward  the 
government's  desire  that  mission  schools  should  take  out 
permits  under  the  educational  regulations  of  the  Govern- 
ment-General. 

There  have  been,  however,  several  co-operative  efforts 
of  the  two  denominational  groups.  Territory  has  been  re- 
distributed so  that  each  mission  now  has  a  separate  field 
without  overlapping  the  fields  of  other  missions.  Mission- 
aries and  money  are  thus  used  to  the  best  advantage  and 
local  competition  between  denominations  is  avoided.  This 
has  involved  the  transfer  of  hundreds  and,  in  some  cases, 
of  thousands  of  Korean  Christians  from  Methodist  to  Pres- 
byterian affiliations  and  from  Presbyterian  to  Methodist; 
but  the  transfers  have  been  effected  with  perfect  good  feel- 
ing. (If  Methodists  and  Presbyterians  can  do  this  in  Korea, 
why  can  they  not  do  it  in  America?)  Another  successful 
co-operative  effort  is  in  the  preparation  and  distribution 
of  Christian  literature.  Bible  translations  have  been  made 


550  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

by  union  committees  of  missionaries.  The  year  1911  was 
signalized  by  the  completion  of  the  whole  Bible  in  Korean, 
a  notable  achievement.  The  Korean  Religious  Tract  So- 
ciety, composed  of  representatives  of  various  communions, 
has  produced  books,  tracts,  and  periodicals  for  the  Korean 
churches  and  their  evangelistic  and  educational  workers. 

In  institutional  work  notable  success  has  attended  the 
group  of  union  institutions  in  Seoul.  One  of  these,  the 
Chosen  Christian  College,  will  stand  as  an  enduring  monu- 
ment to  the  memory  of  one  of  the  great  missionaries  of  the 
modern  church — the  Reverend  Horace  Grant  Underwood, 
D.D.,  LL.D.  His  missionary  career  from  his  arrival  in 
Korea  in  1884  to  his  lamented  death,  October  12,  1916,  was 
rich  in  incident  and  achievement.  He  was  the  first  or- 
dained missionary  to  Korea.  He  baptized  the  first  convert 
in  1886,  opened  the  first  school,  also  in  1886,  organized  the 
first  church  and  administered  the  first  sacrament  of  the 
Lord's  Supper  to  Koreans  in  1887.  In  the  same  year,  he 
made  the  first  of  those  long  itinerating  tours  into  the  in- 
terior which,  continued  by  him  and  his  successors,  spread 
the  knowledge  of  the  Gospel  far  and  wide  in  Korea  and 
resulted  in  groups  of  believers  in  hundreds  of  towns  and 
villages.  He  began  the  literary  work  of  Christian  mis- 
sions in  Korea,  and  hi  1889  published  the  first  of  the  long 
list  of  volumes  with  which  he  and  other  missionaries  have 
enriched  the  literature  of  missions;  and  his  translation  of 
the  Gospel  of  St.  Mark  in  1887  first  made  any  part  of  the 
Bible  accessible  to  the  people  in  written  form.  A  district 
of  diocesan  proportions  was  under  his  care,  and  he  did  in 
it  the  work  of  an  apostle — holding  meetings,  baptizing 
converts,  conducting  Bible  conferences,  organizing  groups 
and  churches,  ordaining  elders,  settling  disputes,  and  coun- 
selling leaders.  He  often  walked  upon  these  tours,  slept 
in  the  wretched  Korean  huts  or  inns,  and  exposed  himself 
freely  to  physical  hardships  from  which  many  a  man  would 
have  shrunk. 

He  had  extraordinary  influence  with  high  officials  and 
members  of  the  Korean  royal  family,  including  the  Em- 


KOREAN  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT  551 

peror  himself  who  often  consulted  him  and  sent  him  a 
valuable  pearl  ring  as  a  wedding  present.  How  the  Em- 
peror clung  to  him  at  the  time  of  the  assassination  of  the 
Queen  in  1895,  and  finally  slept  with  his  head  upon  the 
missionary's  shoulder,  has  been  described  in  an  earlier  chap- 
ter. After  the  annexation  of  Korea  by  the  Japanese,  they 
were  for  a  time  somewhat  suspicious  of  him  in  view  of  his 
known  intimacy  with  the  royal  family  and  his  sympathies 
with  the  frightened  people.  But  they  soon  came  to  learn 
and  to  value  the  high  quality  and  absolute  trustworthiness 
of  the  man;  and  when  he  left  Korea  for  the  last  time,  the 
authorities  showed  him  marked  honor.  On  the  twenty- 
fifth  anniversary  of  his  wedding,  March  13,  1914,  nearly  all 
the  notable  men  and  women  of  Korea's  capital  called  to 
tender  their  congratulations — Japanese  officials,  Korean 
nobles,  members  of  the  consular  corps,  missionaries  and 
Korean  Christians  of  all  communions,  and  faculties  and 
student  deputations  of  schools,  while  the  tables  were  loaded 
with  presents.  He  was  a  man  of  conspicuous  ability  and 
force  of  character.  His  convictions  were  intense  and  his 
temperament  enthusiastic,  but  his  spirit  was  catholic  and 
his  vision  broad.  He  was  once  offered  the  vice-presidency 
of  a  great  corporation  in  America  at  a  salary  of  $25,000  a 
year,  but  he  felt  that  his  life  was  consecrated  to  the  mis- 
sionary enterprise  in  Korea,  and  he  unhesitatingly  declined 
the  offer.  It  was  in  the  mind  of  this  man  that  the  Chosen 
Christian  College  in  Seoul  was  conceived,  and  it  was  he 
who  won  the  good-will  of  the  Japanese  Government-General 
for  it,  became  its  first  president,  and  personally  secured  the 
first  gifts  of  $77,000  in  America  for  the  erection  of  buildings. 
Another  union  institution  in  Seoul  is  the  Pierson  Memo- 
rial Bible  School,  founded  by  friends  of  the  late  Reverend 
Doctor  Arthur  T.  Pierson,  whose  flaming  zeal  did  so  much 
to  arouse  the  missionary  interest  of  his  generation.  While 
the  Chosen  Christian  College  and  the  Pierson  Memorial 
are  jointly  supported  by  Methodists  and  Presbyterians, 
they  do  not  have  the  united  constituency  of  all  the  mis- 
sionary bodies  in  Korea  that  is  enjoyed  by  the  remarkable 


552  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

group  of  medical  institutions  known  as  the  Severance  Union 
Medical  College  and  its  affiliated  Severance  Union  Hos- 
pital and  Nurses  Training  School.  The  hospital  is  the  suc- 
cessor of  the  Royal  Korean  Hospital,  which  was  founded  by 
Horace  N.  Allen,  M.D.,  in  1884.  In  the  year  1900  0.  R. 
Avison,  M.D.,  who  had  become  its  superintendent  several 
years  before,  enlisted  the  interest  of  that  Christian  phi- 
lanthropist, Mr.  Lewis  H.  Severance  of  Cleveland,  Ohio, 
whose  generous  gifts,  followed  by  those  of  his  son,  Mr. 
John  L.  Severance,  and  his  daughter,  Mrs.  Francis  F. 
Prentiss,  have  made  possible  one  of  the  most  complete 
medical  plants  in  Asia.  The  work  of  its  medical  and  sur- 
gical staff,  headed  by  Doctor  Avison,  has  won  the  high 
commendation  of  such  competent  judges  as  Doctor  William 
H.  Welch  of  Johns  Hopkins  Medical  College  in  Baltimore 
and  Doctor  Simon  Flexner  of  the  Rockefeller  Bureau  of 
Medical  Research  in  New  York,  both  of  whom  personally 
inspected  the  institution  during  their  trip  to  the  Far  East 
a  few  years  ago.  Major-General  Arthur  MacArthur,  of  the 
United  States  Army,  wrote:  "In  a  very  extended  tour  of 
the  entire  East,  I  found  no  institution  doing  more  beneficent 
work  than  the  Severance  Hospital  in  Seoul."  The  gradua- 
tion in  1908  of  the  first  class  to  take  the  full  course  in  medi- 
cine and  surgery  in  the  Medical  College  was  recognized  by 
the  Japanese  as  well  as  by  Koreans  and  foreigners  as  an 
occasion  of  great  interest,  the  seven  Koreans  receiving  their 
diplomas  from  no  less  a  personage  than  Prince  Ito,  who 
made  a  warmly  congratulatory  address.  The  Government- 
General  has  fixed  a  high  standard  for  the  practice  of  medi- 
cine, but  the  graduates  of  the  Severance  Union  Medical 
College  meet  it,  and  the  first  certificates  that  were  issued 
by  the  government  were  given  to  these  young  men  on  the 
day  following  their  graduation.  The  semiofficial  Seoul 
Press,  edited  by  a  Japanese,  devoted  six  columns  of  its 
issue,  June  5,  to  a  highly  commendatory  account  of  the 
graduating  exercises,  and  editorially  declared  that  they 
"marked  the  opening  of  a  new  chapter  in  the  history  of 
medical  science  in  Korea." 


KOREAN  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT  553 

The  perplexing  problems  which  mission  schools  are  facing, 
in  connection  with  the  educational  regulations  of  the  gov- 
ernment, have  been  discussed  in  a  separate  chapter,  but 
some  other  phases  of  the  mission  educational  problem  may 
be  noted  here.  The  Korea  missions  were  late  in  beginning 
educational  work.  This  was  partly  because  the  missions 
themselves  were  comparatively  new.  The  first  Protestant 
missionary  did  not  enter  Korea  until  a  quarter  of  a  century 
after  the  beginning  of  work  in  Japan  and  three-quarters  of 
a  century  after  the  beginning  of  work  in  China.  Schools 
were  not  necessary  to  secure  a  foothold,  as  in  some  other 
lands,  and  the  missionaries  were  so  engrossed  by  their 
evangelistic  opportunities  that  everything  else  fell  into  the 
background.  There  was,  too,  a  period  when  many  of  the 
missionaries  feared  that  large  schools  would  foster  the  spirit 
of  institutionalism  and  divert  energy  from  preaching  the 
gospel.  While  the  Presbyterians  had  some  small  day- 
schools  of  primary  grade  almost  from  the  beginning  of  their 
work,  they  did  not  have  a  permanently  established  academy 
for  boys  until  1900,  and  only  one  for  girls.  The  Methodist 
missionaries  opened  a  boarding-school  for  boys  in  Seoul  in 
1886,  and  the  Woman's  Foreign  Missionary  Society  a  board- 
ing-school for  girls  in  the  same  year,  but  the  former  did  not 
reach  the  status  of  a  high  school  until  1894,  and  the  latter 
until  some  time  later.  Finally,  the  missionaries  awaked  to 
the  fact  that  an  illiterate  church  among  an  emotional  peo- 
ple would  be  built  on  sand;  that  congregations  could  not 
be  maintained  on  a  stable  basis  by  memorizing  hymns  and 
texts,  learning  Bible  stories,  and  listening  to  the  extem- 
poraneous talks  of  unschooled  local  leaders,  however  de- 
voted they  might  be;  and  that  there  must  be  a  settled 
ministry  of  men  competent  to  preach  statedly  and  intelli- 
gently. Now,  the  average  mission  station  has  a  boarding- 
school  for  boys  and  another  for  girls,  and  each  of  the  two 
largest  stations,  Seoul  and  Pyongyang,  has  the  higher  in- 
stitutions already  described. 

Industrial  training  is  wisely  provided  in  several  schools. 
The  occasion  for  this  form  of  educational  work  lies  in  the 


554  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

desirability  of  providing  some  means  of  self-help  for  stu- 
dents who  have  no  money  and  who  ought  not  to  be  given 
a  support  which  would  beget  an  expectation  of  support 
through  life,  and  thus  pauperize  them  at  the  outset.  More- 
over, it  is  unwise  to  educate  boys  away  from  their  former 
manner  of  life  and  not  to  any  other  in  which  they  can 
support  themselves.  Such  industrial  training  is  often  es- 
sential to  the  accomplishment  of  the  missionary  object. 
A  self-supporting,  indigenous  church  cannot  be  built  up 
unless  there  are  Christians  who  are  able  to  maintain  it. 
Education  in  countries  whose  economic  conditions  are  so 
radically  wrong  as  they  are  in  many  parts  of  Asia  should 
not  ignore  practical  needs.  The  Korea  missionaries  realize 
the  importance  of  these  considerations,  and  they  are  train- 
ing the  students  in  their  schools  to  a  wholesome,  practical 
life.  The  studies  that  are  essential  to  mental  discipline 
and  intellectual  culture  are  carefully  taught,  but  instruc- 
tion is  also  provided  in  farming,  gardening,  fruit-raising, 
blacksmithing,  carpentering,  furniture-making,  shoemaking, 
printing,  and  other  practical  trades.  In  the  Hugh  O'Neill 
Jr.  Industrial  Academy  in  Syenchyun,  for  example,  there 
are  a  model  farm,  garden  and  orchard,  and  shops  of  various 
kinds.  The  boys  do  all  the  work  of  the  institution,  devoting 
to  it  a  part  of  every  week-day.  The  work  includes  working 
out  by  contract,  road-making,  teaching  in  the  lower  schools, 
bookbinding,  hat-making,  making  straw  rope  and  straw 
shoes,  and  preparing  materials  for  additional  school-build- 
ings. The  minimum  of  practicable  expenditure  has  been 
maintained,  and  the  spirit  of  self-dependence  is  diligently 
fostered.  When  these  young  men  are  graduated,  they  are 
worth  something  to  the  state  as  well  as  to  the  church. 
Training  of  this  kind  is  given  at  a  number  of  other  mission 
stations.  The  schools  for  girls  are  equally  practical,  the 
courses  including  sewing,  embroidery,  cooking,  and  other 
household  duties  and  economics.  A  Korean  who  marries 
a  girl  who  has  been  educated  at  a  mission  school  gets  a 
wife  who  knows  how  to  transform  a  dirty  hovel  into  a  decent 
and  well-ordered  home. 


OQ 

d 


KOREAN  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT  555 

The  educational  regulations  of  the  Government-General 
have  caused  some  anxieties  that  are  quite  apart  from  the 
mooted  question  about  the  teaching  of  religion.  The  gov- 
ernment is  not  to  be  blamed  for  these  anxieties  since  they 
relate  to  the  question  whether  the  mission  institutions  can 
meet  the  proper  requirements  of  the  authorities  regarding 
buildings,  grade  of  work,  and  qualifications  of  teachers. 
The  colleges  and  boarding-schools  are  loyally  endeavoring 
to  do  so.  The  policy  of  the  boards  and  missions  is  not  to 
develop  a  great  system  of  general  education  which  would 
duplicate  the  educational  system  of  the  government,  but 
to  maintain  a  limited  number  of  institutions  of  high  grade 
to  serve  the  specific  purposes  for  which  Christian  work  is 
conducted  in  a  non-Christian  land.  This  much  is  clear; 
but  the  question  of  elementary  schools  is  far  from  being  so. 
They  are  maintained  by  the  Korean  Christians  in  connec- 
tion with  their  village  churches.  Very  few  of  them  come 
up  to  the  standard  which  the  government  deems  it  neces- 
sary to  impose.  Their  teachers  do  not  know  the  Japanese 
language,  which  the  government  desires  to  have  taught, 
and  Japanese  teachers  command  higher  wages  than  the 
schools  can  pay.  To  enable  these  schools  to  meet  the  re- 
quirements would  involve  expenditures  for  enlargements 
and  teachers  which  are  far  beyond  the  ability  of  the  poor 
Korean  Christians,  and  which  the  mission  boards  could 
hardly  undertake  in  addition  to  their  other  obligations. 
And  yet  Korea  needs  all  its  present  schools,  and  many  more. 
The  census  does  not  give  the  number  of  children  of  elemen- 
tary school  age,  but  Mr.  Sekiya,  director  of  the  Bureau  of 
Education,  estimates  it  at  one-tenth  of  the  population,  or 
nearly  1,700,000.  He  also  says  that  approximately  75,000 
children  are  in  the  government  elementary  schools,  and 
55,000  in  the  private  schools,  a  total  of  only  130,000.  It 
has  been  said  that  98  per  cent  of  the  children  of  school  age 
in  Japan  are  enrolled  in  schools,  and  that  98  per  cent  in 
Korea  are  not.  This  reminds  one  of  Macaulay's  literary 
vice — "exaggeration  in  the  interest  of  vividness";  but  it 
suggests  the  wide  difference  between  Japan  and  Korea  in 


556  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

educational  facilities  and  the  urgent  need  of  more  adequate 
school  facilities  in  the  latter  country. 

The  medical  work  of  the  missions  is  also  meeting  diffi- 
culties of  a  similar  kind.  The  policy  of  the  boards  and 
missions  has  been  to  have  a  hospital  at  each  central  station. 
The  typical  hospital  is  a  modest  building,  with  accommoda- 
tions for  only  a  small  number  of  in-patients,  and  with  but 
one  foreign  physician,  a  few  instruments,  and  one  or  two 
native  assistants  and  nurses  who  usually  have  had  no  train- 
ing except  what  he  could  give  them.  As  I  visited  these 
hospitals,  I  marvelled  at  the  amount  and  value  of  the 
medical  and  surgical  work  that  the  overworked  and  scantily 
equipped  doctor  was  doing — treating  all  sorts  of  diseases 
and  performing  alone  major  operations  which  no  surgeon 
in  America  would  undertake  without  assisting  surgeons  and 
several  trained  nurses. 

However  unsatisfactory  such  a  hospital  might  be  from 
the  view-point  of  advanced  modern  equipment,  it  was  in- 
finitely better  than  anything  that  the  Koreans  had  ever 
known.  Their  neglect  of  all  sanitary  precautions,  their 
filthy  houses,  their  carelessness  in  food,  their  drinking  from 
infected  wells  and  streams,  and  their  utter  ignorance  of  the 
causes  of  disease  combine  to  give  every  kind  of  malady  a 
free  course,  and  the  sufferings  of  the  afflicted  are  often 
grievous.  To  people  who  know  nothing  of  sanitation,  who 
believe  disease  to  be  caused  by  demons  who  must  be  propi- 
tiated, who  were  accustomed  to  plaster  wax  over  suppurat- 
ing sores  to  keep  the  discharges  from  escaping,  to  feed 
sickly  babies  with  cucumbers  and  chunks  of  half-cooked 
rice,  and  to  treat  pain  by  sticking  a  dirty  iron  needle  into 
the  affected  part — to  such  people  the  least  that  a  medical 
missionary  could  do  with  unaided  hands  was  an  unspeakable 
blessing.  When  a  Mr.  On,  living  about  twenty-five  miles 
from  Taiku,  had  a  bad  case  of  dyspepsia,  a  sympathetic 
neighbor  tied  a  cloth  swab  on  the  end  of  a  reed,  two  and  a 
half  feet  long,  and  pushed  it  down  his  throat  as  far  as  it 
would  go,  "in  order  to  ram  the  food  past  the  sticking  place." 
Unfortunately,  the  reed  broke  off  and  left  ten  and  a  half 


KOREAN  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT  557 

inches  and  the  swab  in  the  stomach.  After  five  days  of 
agony,  the  sufferer  was  brought  to  the  mission  hospital  at 
Taiku,  arriving  in  a  pitiable  condition.  The  hospital  that 
one  now  finds  in  Taiku  had  not  then  been  built.  There  were 
only  two  small,  straw-thatched,  mud-walled  buildings,  a 
home-made  wooden  operating-table,  and  a  small  instrument 
case.  This  was  the  equipment  of  the  medical  missionary 
when  Mr.  On  was  carried  into  the  compound,  nor  was  there 
any  one  who  knew  how  to  help  in  a  major  operation.  Would 
a  surgeon  in  the  United  States  consent  to  operate  in  such 
circumstances  ?  But  the  alternative  was  death,  and  Doctor 
W.  0.  Johnson  administered  an  anaesthetic,  opened  the 
abdomen  and  stomach  by  median  incisions,  found  the  piece 
of  reed  with  the  swab  attached  to  it  lying  in  the  stomach, 
extracted  it,  and  nursed  Mr.  On  to  such  a  fine  recovery 
that  on  the  day  of  his  discharge,  he  ate  a  big  bowl  of  rice 
and  said  he  wanted  to  walk  home. 

But  the  day  for  the  small,  one-man  hospital  in  Korea  has 
passed.  The  Japanese  Government-General  rightly  holds 
that  a  hospital  should  have  a  more  adequate  staff,  plant  and 
equipment.  Not  only  this,  but  the  government  has  opened 
free  public  hospitals  in  many  of  the  cities  where  the  mis- 
sion hospitals  are  located,  and  has  provided  them  with  spa- 
cious buildings,  modern  operating-rooms  and  apparatus, 
and  a  large  corps  of  physicians,  surgeons,  and  nurses.  At 
Chungju,  for  example,  where  the  little  mission  hospital 
has  one  physician  and  no  trained  nurse,  the  government 
hospital  has  seven  doctors,  a  dentist,  an  eye,  ear,  nose,  and 
throat  specialist,  a  druggist,  a  business  superintendent, 
an  ample  supply  of  nurses  and  helpers,  and  enough  money 
to  make  their  budget  as  elastic  as  their  needs. 

In  a  large  metropolitan  centre  like  Seoul,  where  half  a 
dozen  missions  can  join  in  a  union  institution,  and  where  a 
great  philanthropist  can  be  found  to  equip  it,  the  problem 
can  be  successfully  solved,  as  it  has  been  in  the  Severance 
Union  Hospital,  with  its  numerous  staff  and  modern  facili- 
ties. But  what  can  the  isolated  hospitals  in  the  provincial 
cities  do  ?  The  medical  missionaries  have  long  keenly  felt 


558  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

the  limitations  to  which  they  have  been  subjected.  They 
are  well-educated  men,  graduates  of  American  and  British 
medical  colleges  of  recognized  standing,  thoroughly  com- 
petent professionally.  But  they  cannot  do  the  impossible. 
Two  foreign  physicians,  at  least  one  foreign  trained  nurse, 
and  several  native  physicians  and  nurses  should  be  deemed 
a  minimum  staff  for  a  hospital  under  present  conditions, 
together  with  a  considerable  increase  in  financial  support. 
The  Severance  Union  Medical  College  and  Nurses  Training 
School  are  turning  out  the  native  physicians  and  nurses, 
but  the  foreign  staff  and  the  increased  budget  must  come 
from  America  and  Great  Britain.  This  is  delightfully  easy 
to  say;  but  any  one  who  innocently  imagines  that  it  is  easy 
to  accomplish  little  knows  how  difficult  it  is  to  secure 
enough  highly  trained  physicians  and  nurses  who  are  will- 
ing to  spend  their  lives  in  a  squalid  Korean  city,  on  a  mis- 
sionary's salary,  and  with  an  equipment  which,  however 
improved,  would  still  be  small  compared  with  the  elabor- 
ately equipped  hospitals  in  the  United  States. 

There  are  no  more  self-sacrificing  men  in  the  world  than 
the  medical  missionaries  in  Asia  and  Africa.  They  are 
doing  a  wonderful  work  for  humanity  with  the  scantiest 
material  resources.  To  the  poor  and  suffering  people  the 
sympathetic  and  devoted  missionary  physician  is  like  an 
angel  of  mercy.  His  power  in  alleviating  pain  and  in  heal- 
ing disease  is  miraculous  in  their  eyes.  They  almost  wor- 
ship him,  and  with  reason.  Like  his  divine  Master,  the 
Great  Physician,  he  goes  "about  doing  good"  and  "healing 
all  manner  of  disease,"  "for  God  'is'  with  him." 


CHAPTER  XXXIV 

THE  POLITICO-MISSIONARY  COMPLICATION  IN 

KOREA 

I  HAVE  described  in  another  chapter  the  attitude  of  the 
Japanese  Government  toward  missionaries  and  churches 
in  Japan,  the  freedom  that  all  religious  work  enjoys,  and 
the  recognition  that  is  given  to  Christianity  and  some  of  its 
representatives.  In  Korea,  the  attitude  of  the  Government- 
General  and  its  various  officials  is  somewhat  different. 
The  reason  does  not  lie  in  opposition  to  Christianity  as  a 
religion,  but  in  the  peculiarity  of  the  political  conditions 
and  in  the  problems  which  grow  out  of  the  influence  of  the 
foreign  missionary  body  over  the  Korean  Christians.  The 
Japanese  attitude  cannot  be  properly  characterized  as  one 
of  hostility.  Indeed,  it  frequently  has  been  one  of  cor- 
diality and  helpfulness,  particularly  toward  the  mission- 
aries in  Seoul.  This  has  been  especially  noticeable  in 
recent  years.  But  for  some  time  after  the  Japanese  occu- 
pation, there  was  considerable  irritation  because  of  the 
alleged  anti-Japanese  attitude  of  missionaries.  The  Japa- 
nese regarded  them  as  inimical  to  their  interests  and  as 
more  or  less  consciously  giving  such  encouragement  to  the 
Koreans  as  to  embarrass  the  Government-General. 

Civil  and  military  officials  did  not  hesitate  to  express 
their  concern  in  personal  conversations,  and  the  vernacular 
press  in  Japan  teemed  with  bitter  attacks  upon  the  mis- 
sionaries, especially  those  from  America.  The  more  care- 
ful Japan  Times  undoubtedly  reflected  the  common  view 
when  it  editorially  said:  "If  there  was  a  time  when  we  en- 
tertained some  misgivings  about  Christian  missionaries  in 
Korea,  these  suspicions  have  long  since  vanished  with  us. 
They  will  find  us  among  the  last,  therefore,  to  accuse  them 
of  meddling  with  political  affairs  in  Korea.  But  the  fact 

559 


560  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

remains  that  they  are  veiy  influential  among  the  Koreans, 
especially  amongst  the  younger  and  rising  generation.  It 
is  also  a  fact  that  dissatisfied  and  aggressive  Koreans,  who 
are  constantly  conspiring  against  the  protectorate  regime, 
are  largely  those  who  at  one  tune  or  another  have  come 
under  missionary  influence.  Hence  arises  the  circumstance 
that  missionaries,  their  churches  and  schools  in  Korea,  are 
made  the  rallying-points  for  these  malcontents,  though  such 
a  thing  may  be  wholly  against  the  intentions  and  wishes  of 
these  missionaries,  as  we  know  they  are.  However  against 
the  aims  and  endeavors  of  the  missionaries  these  acts  of 
their  fostering  may  be  then,  it  is  nevertheless  true  that  the 
latter  are  causing  considerable  mischief  in  the  friendly  re- 
lations with  Japan  and  Korea.  Here  then  is  a  very  trouble- 
some problem  which  we  are  facing."  1 

The  situation  is  a  complicated  one,  and  we  should  do  the 
Japanese  the  justice  of  attempting  to  understand  their 
point  of  view.  The  Japanese  are  intensely  nationalistic. 
Indeed  they  represent  the  most  highly  developed  type  of 
nationalism  in  the  world.  It  led  them  into  the  war  with 
Russia,  since  nationalism  was  endangered  by  Russian  ag- 
gression in  the  Far  East.  And  nationalism  is  the  regulative 
principle  of  Japanese  rule  in  Korea.  Realizing  the  island 
isolation  and  the  limited  area  and  productivity  of  their 
own  land,  the  Japanese  look  upon  the  adjacent  peninsula 
as  necessary  to  afford  an  outlet  for  Japan's  overcrowded 
population  and  to  produce  the  additional  food  supplies 
that  the  nation  needs.  Moreover,  from  a  military  and  politi- 
cal view-point,  it  is  the  most  exposed  portion  of  the  Em- 
pire and  the  one  regarding  which  the  Japanese  are  most 
sensitive.  Close  to  Vladivostok,  bordering  Manchuria, 
and  only  a  few  hours  by  steamer  from  Chefoo,  it  would  be 
the  danger-zone  in  case  of  international  complications,  since 
Japan  there  comes  in  contact  with  China  and  some  of  the 
powerful  nations  of  Europe — a  serious  matter  in  this  un- 
happy era  of  racial  jealousies  and  strife.  Japan  has  learned 
this  to  her  bitter  cost,  as  her  most  serious  trouble  at  home 

1  Editorial,  April  3,  1910. 


THE  POLITICO-MISSIONARY  COMPLICATION     561 

(the  Satsuma  Rebellion)  and  two  foreign  wars  (the  China- 
Japan  War  and  the  Russia-Japan  War)  were  caused  by 
the  Korean  situation.  It  is  clear  that  if  Japan  should 
again  become  embroiled  with  China,  or  with  any  Western 
Power,  Korea  would  be  the  battle-ground,  as  it  has  been  in 
every  war  that  Japan  has  ever  waged.  The  attitude  of  the 
Koreans,  therefore,  is  of  vital  importance  to  the  Japanese. 
While  they  are  not  strong  from  a  military  point  of  view, 
17,000,000  of  sullen,  embittered  people  between  a  Japanese 
army  and  its  foreign  foe,  or  at  the  rear  of  a  Japanese  army 
at  the  front,  would  be  a  serious  menace. 

For  these  reasons  the  Japanese  feel  that  they  cannot  be 
content  with  ruling  Korea  as  an  outlying  dependency,  as 
America  rules  the  Philippines  and  Great  Britain  rules  India, 
but  that  they  must  amalgamate  it  with  the  Empire  and  as- 
similate its  people,  teaching  them  the  Japanese  language, 
infusing  them  with  Japanese  ideals,  and  developing  in  them 
patriotic  feeling  for  Japan  as  their  mother  country.  The 
Honorable  M.  Komatsu,  then  director  of  the  Bureau  of 
Foreign  Affairs  of  the  Government-General,  wrote  Novem- 
ber 4,  1915:  "It  is  the  purpose  of  Japan  to  make  them 
(the  Koreans)  not  only  good  and  intelligent  but  also  loyal 
subjects  of  the  Empire  in  name  and  reality." 

It  is  inevitable  in  such  circumstances  that  the  Japanese 
should  be  sensitive  about  any  influences  which  they  regard 
as  in  the  slightest  degree  divisive  or  as  coming  between 
them  and  the  people  that  they  are  trying  to  assimilate,  and 
that  they  should  feel  that  the  carrying  out  of  their  policy, 
in  the  peculiar  conditions  that  prevail,  justifies  close  gov- 
ernmental control. 

There  are  two  opinions  among  the  Japanese  as  to  the 
best  method  of  attaining  the  desired  end.  The  civil  party 
believes  that  a  humane  and  enlightened  policy  is  not  only 
the  best  for  the  Koreans  but  the  best  for  the  Japanese, 
conciliating  a  people  who  have  for  centuries  feared  and 
distrusted  the  Japanese,  and  tending  to  bind  them  to  their 
new  rulers.  The  military  party  believes  that  the  Koreans 
should  be  ruled  with  an  iron  hand,  and  so  thoroughly  cowed 


562  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

that  they  will  never  dare  to  assert  themselves  against  the 
Japanese.  The  words  "civil"  and  "military"  are  not  en- 
tirely accurate  as  descriptive  terms.  Some  civilians  ad- 
vocate the  stern  policy  and  some  army  officers  the  humane. 
But,  broadly  speaking,  they  serve  to  indicate  the  line  of 
cleavage  between  the  two  parties. 

The  military  party  governed  Korea  immediately  after 
the  Russia-Japan  War,  and  its  inexorable  methods,  together 
with  the  brutality  and  greed  of  a  swarm  of  Japanese  adven- 
turers who  came  over  to  exploit  the  helpless  country,  were 
fast  reducing  the  people  to  the  desperation  of  despair. 
Civil  government  was  then  established  by  Prince  Ito. 
Under  his  wise  and  statesmanlike  administration,  many 
needed  reforms  were  inaugurated.  Some  of  the  indolent 
and  slovenly  Koreans  resented  the  effort  to  arouse  them 
from  their  lethargy,  compel  them  to  obey  sanitary  regula- 
tions, and  to  work  as  they  had  never  worked  before;  but 
the  Japanese  were  right,  and  the  substantial  benefits  of 
their  policy  soon  became  so  apparent  that  the  better  class 
of  Koreans  began  to  recognize  them,  and  the  country  ap- 
peared to  be  entering  upon  an  era  of  peaceful  prosperity. 
Prince  Ito's  successor,  Viscount  Sone,  continued  this  wise 
policy.  After  an  administration  which  was  shortened  by 
illness,  he  was  succeeded  in  July,  1910,  by  Count  Terauchi. 
I  have  had  occasion  to  write  more  fully  of  him  in  another 
chapter.  Suffice  it  here  that  he  was  a  soldier  by  tempera- 
ment as  well  as  by  profession,  an  able  executive,  and  was 
believed  to  hold  just  and  moderate  views  and  to  be  disposed 
to  continue  the  enlightened  policy  of  his  predecessors.  His 
personal  attitude  toward  Christianity  was  not  sympathetic, 
partly  because  his  religious  beliefs  were  in  accord  with  the 
dominant  systems  in  Japan,  and  partly  because  his  ideas 
of  Christianity  had  been  formed  during  his  stay  in  Paris. 
He  supposed  that  France  was  a  Christian  nation,  and  when 
he  saw  the  irreligion  in  political  circles  and  the  frivolity 
and  dissipation  hi  the  social  life  of  the  capital,  which  were 
more  conspicuous  in  the  Paris  of  that  day  than  they  are 
now,  and  which  did  not  represent  the  real  character  of  the 


THE  POLITICO-MISSIONARY  COMPLICATION     563 

French  people,  he  concluded  that  if  these  were  consistent 
with  Christianity,  it  was  not  to  be  admired  as  a  religious 
faith. 

Nevertheless,  he  desired  -to  be  administratively  just  in 
his  attitude  toward  all  religions  in  Korea,  Christianity  in- 
cluded. Shortly  after  his  arrival  he  issued  a  proclamation 
in  which  he  said:  "The  freedom  of  religious  belief  is  recog- 
nized in  all  civilized  countries.  ...  But  those  who  en- 
gage in  strife  on  account  of  sectarian  differences,  or  take 
part  in  politics,  or  pursue  political  intrigues  under  the 
name  of  religious  propaganda,  will  injure  good  customs  and 
manners  and  disturb  public  peace  and  order,  and  as  such 
shall  be  dealt  with  by  law.  There  is  no  doubt,  however, 
that  a  good  religion,  be  it  Buddhism  or  Confucianism  or 
Christianity,  has  as  its  aim  the  improvement,  spiritual  as 
well  as  material,  of  mankind  at  large;  and  in  this  not  only 
does  it  not  conflict  with  administration  but  really  helps 
it  in  attaining  the  purpose  it  has  in  view."  When  a  news- 
paper interviewer  asked  him  his  opinion  of  missionaries,  he 
replied:  "Freedom  of  religion  will  always  be  respected, 
and  I  am  ready  to  extend  due  protection  and  facilities  to 
the  propagation  of  all  religious  doctrines,  provided  they  do 
not  interfere  with  politics.  I  am  one  of  those  who  fully 
appreciate  the  good  work  of  foreign  missionaries,  and  as 
we  have  the  same  object  in  view  as  they,  the  improving  of 
the  general  conditions  of  the  people,  their  work  will  by  no 
means  be  subject  to  any  inconvenience.  I  need  scarcely 
say  that  all  vested  rights  of  foreign  residents  will  be  fully 
respected." 

Two  events,  however,  induced  him  to  listen  to  the  more 
extreme  party,  which  was  headed  by  General  Akashi,  the 
commander  of  the  gendarmerie  in  Korea.  The  first  was 
the  assassination,  in  October,  1909,  of  Prince  Ito,  by  a 
Korean  fanatic  who  had  once  been  connected  with  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church.  This  tragedy,  following  the 
shooting  in  San  Francisco  in  March,  1908,  of  Mr.  D.  W. 
Stevens,  the  American  diplomatic  adviser  of  the  Japanese 
in  Seoul,  by  a  Korean  who  claimed  to  be  a  Protestant, 


564  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

doubtless  brought  Count  Terauchi  to  Korea  with  the  feel- 
ing that  he  would  have  to  deal  with  desperate  men  and  with 
the  suspicion  that  such  men  might  be  seeking  to  shelter 
themselves  in  the  Christian  Church.  This  suspicion  was 
intensified  by  various  minor  acts  and  reports  of  Korean 
revolutionaries,  which  were  less  tragic  but  apparently  no 
less  significant.  The  second  event  was  the  growth  of  revo- 
lutionary sentiment  in  various  parts  of  Asia,  and  particu- 
larly in  China.  Every  throne  felt  its  effects  and  the  minds 
of  some  Koreans  were  stirred  with  new  hope  that  they,  too, 
might  inaugurate  a  successful  revolt,  pathetic  as  such  a 
hope  seems  to  us. 

The  Japanese  party  which  favored  stern  treatment  of  the 
Koreans  made  the  most  of  these  events.  They  vehemently 
argued  that  the  fate  of  Prince  Ito  showed  the  futility  of  a 
conciliatory  policy  and  that  if  Japan  did  not  want  to  have 
a  revolution  on  its  hands,  it  must  adopt  such  sternly  re- 
pressive measures  that  the  Koreans  would  learn  once  for 
all  that  Japan  would  not  brook  opposition.  Like  men  of 
the  same  type  in  other  lands,  these  Japanese  "Jingoes" 
luridly  described  the  perils  to  which  the  nation  was  exposed 
and  the  necessity  of  giving  the  military  secret  service  and 
the  gendarmerie  ample  powers  to  meet  them.  When  the 
Governor  General  made  a  journey,  they  surrounded  him 
with  police  and  gave  him  the  impression  that  nothing  but 
their  vigilance  saved  his  life.  For  example,  when  he  was 
to  pass  through  Syenchyun,  December  28,  1910,  the  police 
ordered  the  students  of  the  mission  school,  the  Hugh  O'Neill 
Jr.  Industrial  Academy,  to  be  at  the  railway  station  in 
honor  of  his  passage.  Before  the  boys  were  permitted  to 
enter  the  station  enclosure,  they  were  searched  by  the 
police  and  deprived  of  their  pocket-knives.  Two  six-year- 
old  tots,  whose  little  legs  had  been  unable  to  keep  up  with 
the  procession  and  who  arrived  breathlessly  a  few  minutes 
afterward,  were  also  searched  in  the  same  manner  and  their 
pencil-knives  taken  away.  The  Data  for  Prosecution,  issued 
by  the  Japanese  in  the  spring  of  1912,  as  a  "statement  of 
the  facts  connected  with  the  indictment  of  the  accused 


THE  POLITICO-MISSIONARY  COMPLICATION     565 

Koreans"  in  the  "Korean  Conspiracy  Case,"  included  the 
following: 

"At  Syenchyun,  the  conspirators  proceeded  on  the  28th  [Dec. 
1910]  to  the  station  again  and  ranged  themselves  on  the  platform 
with  the  Japanese  and  Koreans  who  came  there  to  welcome  the  Gov- 
ernor General.  The  train  arrived  about  noon,  and  every  one  of  the 
would-be  assassins  watched  intently  for  the  opportunity,  having 
ready  his  revolver  or  short  sword  under  his  long  cloak.  The  Governor 
General  descended  from  the  train  and  saluting  the  welcomers  passed 
within  three  or  four  steps  of  the  conspirators.  Owing,  however,  to 
the  strict  vigilance  of  the  police  officers  and  others,  they  could  not 
accomplish  their  nefarious  object." 

The  Data  for  Prosecution  described  several  other  alleged 
attempts  to  assassinate  the  Governor-General  at  railway 
stations,  the  accounts  closing  with  substantially  the  same 
formula:  "The  Governor-General  passed  closely  by  the 
would-be  assassins,  but  the  vigilance  of  the  gendarmerie 
gave  them  no  chance."  It  would  occur  to  the  average  man 
that  as  railway-station  premises  in  Korea  are  carefully  en- 
closed and  as  no  one  was  permitted  to  pass  the  gates,  when 
the  Governor-General  came,  without  being  searched,  "the 
would-be  assassins"  could  hardly  have  brought  into  the  sta- 
tion "ready  revolvers  or  short  swords,"  except  with  the  con- 
nivance of  the  police,  and  that  if  they  did  get  inside  with 
such  arms  and  with  the  intention  of  killing  the  Governor- 
General,  they  had  ample  opportunity  to  do  so  at  some  one 
of  the  several  times  described  by  the  police  when  "he  passed 
closely  by  them."  It  is  difficult  to  read  this  official  docu- 
ment without  getting  the  impression  that  the  police  who 
furnished  the  material  were  very  desirous  of  having  the 
Governor-General  understand  that  nothing  but  their  "vigi- 
lance" had  kept  him  from  being  assassinated.  It  required 
either  malice,  or  such  a  panic-stricken  imagination  as  the 
Russian  naval  officers  had  when  they  fired  on  fishing-boats 
in  the  North  Sea,  to  see  dangerous  assassins  in  trembling 
little  boys  whose  very  penknives  had  been  taken  away 
from  them. 


566  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

Evidences  multiplied  that  this  military  party  was  in  the 
saddle.  Uniformed  gendarmes  swarmed  throughout  the 
country,  particularly  in  the  north.  Secret  police  were 
ubiquitous.  Spies  attended  every  meeting  of  Koreans. 
All  organizations  were  suspected  of  revolutionary  designs. 
Perhaps  some  organizations  had  such  designs.  We  do  not 
know  that  they  had;  but  every  country  in  Asia  is  honey- 
combed with  guilds  and  societies  of  various  kinds,  many  of 
them  more  or  less  political.  The  Koreans  would  be  lacking 
in  the  commonest  elements  of  human  nature  if  some  of 
them  might  not  have  done  what  every  subject  people  has 
done  since  the  world  began — take  secret  counsel  as  to  how 
the  yoke  of  the  alien  conqueror  might  be  thrown  off. 

From  all  political  movements,  however,  the  missionaries 
and  the  leading  Korean  Christians  resolutely  sought  to 
keep  the  churches  aloof.  Obedience  to  "the  powers  that 
be"  was  preached  from  every  pulpit.  The  church  must 
have  nothing  to  do  with  politics,  the  Christians  were  told. 
Some  Christians  who  were  suspected  of  activity  in  political 
movements  were  not  permitted  to  hold  office  in  the  church, 
and  in  some  cases  were  excommunicated.  So  strong  was 
this  determination  of  the  missionaries  and  Korean  church 
leaders  that  it  was  not  uncommon  for  Koreans  outside  of 
the  churches  to  taunt  Christians  with  being  on  the  side  of 
the  enemies  of  their  country,  and  for  the  missionaries  to 
be  told  that  if  it  were  not  for  them,  a  revolution  would  have 
been  started  long  ago.  During  my  last  visit  I  was  at  pains 
to  question  the  missionaries  and  leading  Korean  Christians 
regarding  their  attitude  toward  the  Japanese.  The  con- 
ferences were  in  private  homes,  and  those  who  were  present 
had  no  motive  for  not  talking  frankly.  Without  exception 
they  replied  that  loyal  recognition  was  the  duty  of  every 
Christian  and  in  line  with  the  teaching  of  Christ,  who  said: 
"Render  unto  Caesar  the  things  which  be  Caesar's,"  and 
of  Paul,  who  said:  "Let  every  soul  be  subject  unto  the 
higher  powers."  One  of  the  missionaries  made  the  point 
that  when  a  missionary  opposes  wrong  he  should  not  be 
understood  as  opposing  the  government.  It  is  the  duty  of 


THE  POLITICO-MISSIONARY  COMPLICATION     567 

missionaries  to  oppose  evil  wherever  it  exists  and  under 
whatever  auspices.  When  they  protest  against  the  opium 
traffic,  they  are  simply  doing  what  the  Japanese  Govern- 
ment is  enforcing  by  law  in  Japan.  When  they  denounce 
the  establishment  of  brothels,  they  are  combating  vice, 
not  the  government.  After  going  back  and  forth  through 
Korea  and  getting  the  opinions  of  missionaries  and  Korean 
Christians  from  one  end  of  the  country  to  the  other,  I  be- 
came satisfied  that  the  missionaries  were  disposed  to  sup- 
port the  government  in  every  proper  way. 

In  spite  of  this  policy,  however,  the  churches  did  not 
escape  hostile  espionage  and  they  soon  began  to  feel  the 
unpleasant  effects.  For  more  than  two  years  reports  from 
various  parts  of  the  country  described  growing  suspicion 
and  harshness  by  Japanese  local  gendarmes  toward  the 
"helpless  Korean  Christians.  The  correspondence  indicated 
that  something  more  was  involved  in  the  course  of  the  gen- 
darmerie than  could  be  accounted  for  by  the  assumption 
that,  wholly  unknown  to  the  missionaries,  there  was  a  plot 
against  the  government  of  which  certain  Korean  Chris- 
tians were  cognizant  and  in  which  some  may  have  par- 
ticipated. 

When  the  Japanese  were  charged  with  persecuting  Chris- 
tianity, they  replied  that  the  liberty  which  Christianity 
enjoyed  in  Japan  proved  that  they  were  not  persecuting  it 
in  Korea.  We  believe  this  to  be  true.  A  distinction,  how- 
ever, must  be  observed  between  the  Japanese  conception 
of  Christianity  and  the  Japanese  conception  of  the  church 
as  an  organization.  In  Japan,  there  is  no  hostility  to  the 
church  because  it  is  composed  of  Japanese,  some  of  them  of 
high  rank,  and  it  is  controlled  by  them.  The  missionaries 
co-operate  with  the  church,  but  they  have  little  or  no  voice 
in  its  management.  In  Korea  the  church  is  more  than 
twice  as  large  as  the  church  in  Japan  and,  in  proportion  to 
the  population,  many  tunes  larger,  and  it  is  of  course  com- 
posed of  Koreans.  The  Japanese  desire  to  control  every- 
thing within  their  dominions,  as  foreign  business  men  have 
learned  to  their  cost.  This  is  particularly  true  in  Korea, 


568  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

where  they  deem  it  necessary  to  their  plans  to  be  absolute 
masters. 

Now  the  Japanese  saw  in  the  Korean  churches  numerous 
and  powerful  organizations  of  their  subjects  which  they 
did  not  control.  They  observed  the  devotion  of  the  people 
to  the  church,  a  devotion  almost  unparalleled  elsewhere. 
The  life  of  the  Korean  was  singularly  empty  and  forlorn  be- 
fore Christianity  came  to  him.  When  he  heard  the  gospel 
preached,  he  eagerly  accepted  it  and  found  in  its  services 
inspirations  and  companionships  that  he  had  never  before 
known.  He  could  say  with  Paul :  ' '  For  me  to  live  is  Christ. ' ' 
When  he  had  a  dispute  with  his  brother  Christian,  he  re- 
membered the  New  Testament  question:  "Dare  any  of 
you  having  a  matter  against  his  neighbor  go  to  law  before 
the  unrighteous  and  not  before  the  saints?"  So  he  takes 
bis  case,  not  to  the  Japanese  policeman  or  magistrate,  but 
to  his  pastor  or  the  missionary.  This  leaves  the  Japanese 
official  with  little  to  do  and  forces  him  to  see  the  life  of  the 
people,  whom  he  is  supposed  to  govern,  go  on  without  him. 
A  Japanese  town  of  8,000  inhabitants  probably  has  100  or 
200  Christians.  The  church  edifice  is  a  comparatively 
small  building  and  the  congregations  are  largely  outnum- 
bered by  Buddhist  or  secular  gatherings.  But  of  the  8,000 
inhabitants  of  the  Korean  town  of  Syenchyun,  where  the 
trouble  first  became  acute,  about  half  are  Christians,  while 
the  adjacent  villages  are  also  largely  Christian.  The  church 
and  the  mission  school  are  the  largest  and  most  conspicuous 
buildings  in  the  place.  There  are  no  Buddhist  temples  and 
no  secular  attractions  which  can  draw  more  than  a  few 
score  persons.  Congregations  of  Christians,  however,  throng 
the  church  with  1,200  or  1,500  Koreans  several  times  on 
Sundays,  and  the  mid-week  prayer  meetings  are  attended 
by  from  700  to  1,000.  Similar  conditions  prevail  in  many 
other  towns  and  villages.  Presbyterians  alone  reported  at 
that  time  60,736  Christians,  including  enrolled  adherents, 
in  Syenchyun  and  Pyongyang  (Japanese  Heijo)  and  their 
tributary  villages.  As  the  Japanese  police  noted  the  multi- 
tudes of  Christians  flocking  to  the  churches,  they  irritably 


THE  POLITICO-MISSIONARY  COMPLICATION     569 

wondered  why  these  Christians  met  so  often  and  what  they 
were  doing.  Spies  were  sent  to  find  out.  Imperious  as 
Russian  police  in  hunting  political  agitators  among  students, 
eager  to  obtain  the  rewards  which  were  believed  to  be  be- 
stowed upon  the  police  who  were  most  successful  in  ferreting 
out  treason,  and  unfamiliar  with  Christian  terminology, 
their  suspicions  were  aroused  as  they  heard  the  great  con- 
gregations sing  with  fervor  such  hymns  as: 

"Onward,  Christian  Soldiers, 
Marching  as  to  warl" 

"Stand  up,  stand  up  for  Jesus, 
Ye  soldiers  of  the  Cross!" 

and  then  listen  to  a  stirring  sermon  which  perhaps  personi- 
fied the  forces  of  evil  in  the  heart,  as  Paul  did,  and  summoned 
the  believer  to  cast  them  out.  One  of  the  missionaries, 
Mr.  George  S.  McCune,  of  Syenchyun,  in  one  of  his  daily 
Bible  talks  to  his  students  in  the  Hugh  O'Neill  Jr.  Academy, 
expounded  the  narrative  of  David  and  Goliath,  emphasizing 
the  conventional  lesson  that  the  weak  man  whose  cause  is 
just  and  whose  heart  is  pure  can  overcome  the  strongest. 
This  was  promptly  reported  to  the  authorities  as  treasona- 
ble, since  Mr.  McCune  must  have  intended  to  teach  that 
David  symbolized  the  weak  Korean  and  Goliath  the  strong 
Japanese.  One  pastor  was  arrested  because  he  preached 
about  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven;  he  was  told  that  there  was 
"only  one  kingdom  out  here  and  that  is  the  kingdom  of 
Japan."  The  Christian  Church  opposes  immorality,  the 
morphine  habit,  and  cigarette  smoking,  especially  by  the 
women  and  children,  and  this  aroused  the  anger  of  certain 
Japanese  who  have  done  not  a  little  to  encourage  these 
vices  in  Korea.  Pastor  Kil  of  Pyongyang  advised  the  par- 
ents of  his  congregation  not  to  allow  their  children  to  smoke 
cigarettes  or  to  work  in  the  recently  established  cigarette 
factory.  Shortly  afterward,  he  was  warned  by  the  police 
that,  as  the  manufacture  of  tobacco  was  a  government 
monopoly,  his  advice  was  treasonable  and  must  not  be  re- 


570  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

peated.  Thus  the  police  placed  wrong  constructions  upon 
what  they  saw  and  heard,  and  imagined  in  a  vague  but 
bitter  way  that  it  was  inimical  to  the  interests  of  Japan  to 
have  such  a  large  organization  of  Koreans  that  was  not 
amenable  to  their  control. 

The  suspicions  of  the  Japanese  were  probably  strengthened 
by  the  widely  published  statements  regarding  the  promi- 
nence of  Christians  in  the  revolutionary  movement  in  China. 
Every  American  and  European  knows  that  while  Christi- 
anity awakens  the  minds  of  men,  makes  them  impatient 
of  injustice  and  arouses  them  to  demand  an  honest  and  en- 
lightened government,  there  is  absolutely  nothing  in  the 
teaching  of  Christ  to  lead  Christians  to  conspire  against  a 
government,  unless  it  is  an  evil  and  oppressive  one.  Japa- 
nese Christians  are  famous  for  their  loyalty  to  their  Em- 
peror, and  British  Christians  are  more  devoted  to  their 
King  than  American  Christians  are  to  their  President.  If 
a  government  is  just,  Christianity  is  absolutely  indifferent 
as  to  whether  it  is  monarchical  or  republican.  Indeed,  the 
majority  of  Christians  throughout  the  world  live  content- 
edly under  monarchies.  Christians  in  China  opposed  the 
Manchu  Dynasty,  not  because  it  had  an  Emperor,  but  be- 
cause it  was  hopelessly  reactionary  and  corrupt.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  the  revolutionary  spirit  was  strongest  among 
the  Chinese  who  were  educated  in  Japan.  But  the  Japa- 
nese police  in  Korea  got  it  into  their  heads  that  the  great 
organization  of  the  Korean  church  was  a  hotbed  of  revo- 
lutionary opportunity,  and  they  jealously  watched  it. 

The  so-called  "Million  Evangelistic  Campaign"  in  1910 
and  1911  intensified  these  suspicions.  It  was  a  concerted 
effort  of  the  churches  to  seek  the  conversion  of  a  million 
souls.  But  the  Japanese  misunderstood  it,  or  feared  that 
such  an  enormous  reinforcement  would  make  the  leaders 
of  the  church  overshadow  the  civil  authorities  still  more. 
The  police  accordingly  redoubled  their  activities.  Gen- 
darmes in  uniform  and  spies  in  citizens'  dress  attended  the 
special  services. :;  •  Pastors  were  required  to  report  the 
names  of  converts  at  police  headquarters.  A  gendarme 


THE  POLITICO-MISSIONARY  COMPLICATION     571 

entered  a  private  house,  drew  his  sword  and  threateningly 
asked  why  the  owner  had  joined  "the  Jesus  Church,"  the 
night  before.  Shopkeepers  who  became  Christians  were 
visited  by  the  police  and  remonstrated  with  for  closing  their 
places  of  business  on  Sunday.  In  one  large  country  church, 
a  Japanese  official  walked  into  the  pulpit  at  a  Sunday  ser- 
vice and  denounced  Christianity  to  the  congregation. 
Probably  one  reason  for  the  activity  of  the  police  was  the 
desire  to  find  out  whether  the  Christians  of  Korea  were  in- 
clined to  imitate  the  example  of  their  brethren  in  China 
and  whether  Baron  Yun  Chi  Ho  was  ambitious  of  becoming 
a  Korean  Sun  Yat  Sen. 

The  strain  was  intensified  by  the  educational  situation, 
which  I  have  described  in  a  separate  chapter.  The  Japa- 
nese attach  great  importance  to  their  public  school  system 
and  to  the  necessity  of  managing  it  as  a  department  of  the 
government.  When  a  policeman  called  on  a  Korean  par- 
ent and  sharply  asked  him  why  he  did  not  send  his  children 
to  the  public  school  instead  of  to  the  church  school,  the 
timid  Korean  was  apt  to  conclude  that  he  was  in  danger  of 
punishment  if  he  did  not  heed  what  he  regarded  as  a  man- 
date; and  when  so  many  of  the  teachers  and  pupils  of  the 
mission  schools  were  among  those  who  were  arrested,  the 
conclusion  appeared  to  be  justified.  The  whole  extensive 
system  of  church  primary  schools  in  Korea  was  in  jeop- 
ardy under  the  combined  exactions  of  Japanese  regula- 
tions and  the  course  of  the  local  police  in  intimidating 
parents. 

In  the  fall  of  1911,  police  suspicion  culminated  in  the 
so-called  "Korean  Conspiracy  Case."  Christians  in  vari- 
ous places  were  arrested  until  hundreds  were  in  jail.  So 
many  teachers  and  students  of  the  Presbyterian  Academy 
at  Syenchyun  were  taken  that  it  had  to  be  closed.  Pastors, 
elders,  deacons,  and  other  leading  church  members  were 
also  seized  and  sent  handcuffed  to  the  capital.  The  police 
refused  to  make  any  explanations  either  to  the  arrested  men 
or  to  their  frightened  families.  Many  of  the  men  and 
boys  were  kept  in  jail  for  months  without  proper  food  or 


572  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

clothing  for  the  cold  weather,  without  knowing  the  charges 
against  them,  and  without  being  permitted  to  confer  with 
counsel.  Finally  some  were  released,  and  the  remainder 
were  brought  to  trial,  June  28,  1912,  in  the  District  Court 
in  Seoul,  on  a  charge  of  conspiracy  to  murder  Governor 
General  Terauchi,  to  which  it  was  said  they  had  confessed. 
The  testimony  was  not  fairly  interpreted  to  the  judges, 
who  did  not  understand  the  Korean  language;  counsel  for 
the  defense  were  not  permitted  to  produce  witnesses  who 
could  have  testified  to  alibis,  and  the  "confessions"  turned 
out  to  have  been  obtained  in  secret  examinations  under 
police  torture,  and  were  repudiated  in  open  court  by  the 
men  who  were  alleged  to  have  made  them.  The  trial  was  a 
travesty  of  justice.  But  the  powerful  gendarmerie  had 
committed  themselves  too  deeply  to  accept  the  humiliation 
of  defeat,  and  on  their  insistence  the  complaisant  judges, 
September  28,  sentenced  105  of  the  accused  men  to  terms 
of  imprisonment  ranging  from  five  to  ten  years.  All  of  the 
condemned  men  were  of  high  character,  one  of  them  being 
Baron  Yun  Chi  Ho,  a  former  member  of  the  Korean  Cab- 
inet, president  of  the  Southern  Methodist  College  at 
Songdo,  vice-president  of  the  Korea  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  and  widely 
known  for  integrity  as  well  as  ability.  The  case  was  car- 
ried to  the  Court  of  Appeals,  which  gave  a  new  trial  begin- 
ning November  26,  1912,  and  which  resulted,  March  21, 
1913,  in  the  acquittal  of  all  the  defendants  except  six.  The 
latter  were  sentenced  to  six  years'  imprisonment,  Baron 
Yun  Chi  Ho  among  them.  After  further  appeals,  the 
Supreme  Court  at  Seoul,  October  9,  1913,  ruled  that  the 
proceedings  in  the  Court  of  Appeals  had  been  "regular," 
and,  without  passing  on  the  merits  of  the  case,  sustained 
the  verdict.  By  this  time  many  Japanese,  as  well  as  prac- 
tically all  foreign  observers,  realized  that  the  "conspiracy" 
had  been  manufactured  out  of  the  imaginations  of  hostile 
and  overzealous  police,  and  believed  that  the  government 
would  take  advantage  of  the  first  convenient  opportunity 
for  liberating  the  men  whom  everybody  now  believed  to  be 
innocent.  This  opportunity  came  in  connection  with  the 


THE  POLITICO-MISSIONARY  COMPLICATION     573 

coronation  of  the  Emperor  in  February,  1915,  at  which  time 
all  the  accused  men  were  released  as  a  mark  of  "imperial 
clemency." 

The  collapse  of  the  "Conspiracy  Case"  cleared  the  air 
considerably.  It  taught  the  Japanese  that  the  mission- 
aries were  not  hostile  to  Japanese  rule,  and  it  emphasized 
to  the  missionaries  the  necessity  for  special  care  in  their 
dealings  with  officials  and  people  in  matters  which  affect 
the  government.  The  resultant  improvement  in  relation- 
ships has  been  marked.  Nevertheless,  a  certain  uneasiness 
continues  to  exist.  The  Japanese  see  that  in  this  country, 
for  whose  people  they  feel  that  they  should  be  the  special 
guides  and  counsellors,  there  are  over  400  foreign  mission- 
aries, many  of  them  resident  in  Korea  before  the  Japanese 
annexed  it,  compactly  organized  into  missions,  strong  in 
the  principal  cities  of  the  country,  and  having  great  influ- 
ence with  hundreds  of  thousands  of  Koreans.  Whatever 
may  be  the  attitude  of  the  lower  police  officials  and  the 
venders  of  morphine  and  panders  of  vice,  intelligent  Japa- 
nese thoroughly  respect  the  missionaries.  They  know  them 
to  be  Christian  gentlemen  who  are  devoting  their  lives  to 
unselfish  labor  for  the  Korean  people.  Many  Japanese 
would  agree  with  the  traveller  who  wrote  from  Korea: 
"Here  has  been  wrought  one  of  the  greatest  Christian  ac- 
complishments in  the  world's  history.  The  lives  of  the 
Americans  who  have  accomplished  this  great  work  are  an 
open  book.  I  hold  no  brief  for  the  missionary.  But  I 
have  seen  much  of  the  work  being  done  here  and  I  know 
the  men  who  are  doing  it.  Picture  to  yourself  the  saintliest 
man  of  your  acquaintance — the  man  whose  character  is  so 
far  above  reproach  that  no  man  has  ever  questioned  it  even 
in  his  own  mind;  the  man  who,  filled  with  the  spirit  of 
Christianity,  lives  his  religion  every  day  of  his  life;  the  man 
who  asks  nothing  else  but  opportunity  to  devote  all  his 
talents  and  all  his  energies  to  unselfish  labor  in  his  Master's 
service.  Think  of  that  man,  and  you  have  the  American 
missionary  in  Korea  as  I  know  him  to  be."  The  Japan 
Advertiser  editorially  referred  to  this  opinion  and  added: 


574  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

"We  do  not  believe  these  statements  will  be  gainsaid  by 
unprejudiced  critics." 

Just  because  of  this  character,  the  Korean  Christians 
look  up  to  the  missionaries  with  an  affection  and  respect 
bordering  upon  veneration.  When  they  were  ignorant, 
depressed,  and  superstitious,  the  missionaries  brought  them 
knowledge  and  hope,  liberated  them  from  the  fear  of 
demons,  ministered  to  their  sick  in  hospitals,  taught  their 
children  in  schools,  visited  the  poor,  comforted  the  dying, 
and  preached  to  all  the  people  "good  tidings  of  great  joy." 
The  simple-hearted  Koreans,  temperamentally  affectionate 
and  responsive  to  a  high  degree,  gladly  responded  to  the 
message  and  gave  to  the  men  and  women  who  brought  it 
an  unstinted  measure  of  devotion.  The  missionaries  are 
the  great  men  in  Korea.  Their  influence  is  moral  rather 
than  authoritative,  for  the  Korean  churches  are  not  sub- 
ject to  the  missions,  and  the  latter  are  doing  all  they  can 
to  induce  the  churches  to  assume  the  management  of  their 
own  religious  activities.  But  to  Japanese  observers  the 
ascendancy  of  the  missionary  body  appears  large.  Every 
government  in  the  world  is  insistent  upon  the  recognition  of 
its  authority  in  its  own  domain,  especially  in  annexed  or 
colonial  territory.  We  know  how  particular  the  British 
are  about  this  in  India,  the  French  in  Madagascar,  and  the 
Americans  in  the  Philippines.  The  Japanese  are  a  high- 
spirited  people,  legitimately  sensitive  about  their  national 
prerogatives  and  resentful  of  anything  that  looks  like  an 
infringement  upon  them. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  missionaries,  in  so  far  as  they 
have  touched  political  matters  at  all,  have  used  their  great 
influence  to  induce  the  Koreans  to  acquiesce  in  Japanese 
rule.  Indeed  it  has  often  been  said  that  if  it  had  not  been 
for  the  missionaries,  a  revolution  would  have  broken  out 
when  Korea  was  annexed  to  Japan.  The  Japanese  fully 
appreciate  this;  but  they  are  restive  under  a  situation  in 
which  foreigners  apparently  have  power  to  make  or  un- 
make a  revolution  among  then*  own  subjects.  Japanese 
national  pride  demands  Japanese  supremacy  within  Japa- 


THE  POLITICO-MISSIONARY  COMPLICATION     575 

nese  territory.  A  Japanese  official  who  sees  himself  over- 
shadowed by  an  American  missionary  is  more  or  less  un- 
consciously jealous  and  is  apt  to  feel  that  such  pre-eminence 
is  prejudicial  to  the  interests  of  Japan,  and  that  in  some 
way  it  must  be  broken.  It  is  clear  that  the  missionaries 
are  not  to  be  blamed  for  this  situation.  On  the  contrary, 
it  is  a  high  tribute  to  their  worth.  Surely  they  should  not 
be  censured  for  being  men  of  such  purity  of  character,  kind- 
ness of  heart,  and  unselfishness  of  conduct  that  the  people 
trust  them.  We  cannot  tell  them  to  act  so  badly  that  they 
will  forfeit  the  respect  of  the  Korean  Christians.  But  it  is 
equally  clear  that  the  missionaries  and  their  boards  must 
consider  the  view-point  of  the  Japanese  and  do  what  they 
can  to  meet  it. 

We  do  not  insist  that  all  of  the  several  hundred  American 
missionaries  have  been  wholly  without  fault.  In  the  midst 
of  a  frightened  and  helpless  people,  seeing  what  they  be- 
lieved to  be  injustice  and  cruelty,  anxious  for  the  churches 
and  schools  which  represent  the  toils  of  many  years,  they 
could  not  be  reasonably  expected  to  act  as  if  they  were  deaf 
and  dumb.  Let  it  be  conceded  that  some  of  them  have 
contributed  heat  as  well  as  light  to  the  question  under  con- 
sideration. Their  position  was  one  of  exceeding  difficulty. 
They  strongly  sympathized  with  Japan  during  the  war 
with  Russia.  When,  however,  Japan  at  the  close  of  the 
war  began  the  actual  work  of  reorganizing  the  country,  the 
missionaries  could  not  be  blind  to  the  numerous  acts  of 
injustice  that  were  committed.  They  saw  that  many  of 
the  Japanese  in  Korea  were  not  the  best  representatives  of 
the  spirit  and  purpose  that  Japan  had  shown  in  the  war 
and  that  she  professed  to  be  desirous  of  maintaining  before 
the  world.  They  saw  the  property  of  the  Koreans  taken 
without  due  compensation,  and  that  it  did  not  help  the 
poor  people  in  the  least  to  be  told  that  the  compensation 
had  been  paid  to  corrupt  officials,  who  had  pocketed  it. 
The  missionaries,  living  in  various  parts  of  the  country, 
intimately  acquainted  with  the  Koreans  and  in  close  con- 
tact with  them,  regarded  by  them  as  their  best  friends  and 


576  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

natural  protectors,  were  in  a  position  to  see  better  than 
any  one  else  in  the  world  the  wrongs  and  hardships  of  the 
people  under  their  care.  And  yet  the  missionaries  were 
friends  not  only  of  the  Koreans  but  of  the  Japanese. 

In  these  circumstances,  it  was  and  it  is  now  exceedingly 
difficult  for  the  missionaries  to  hold  a  mediate  position. 
When  the  Korean  Christians  appealed  to  them  for  help,  it 
was  natural  that  they  should  speak  in  their  behalf  to  the 
Japanese;  and  when  the  Japanese,  as  was  sometimes  the 
case,  declined  under  various  pretexts  to  give  the  desired 
relief,  or  failed  to  do  so,  the  missionaries  were  as  naturally 
troubled.  Their  situation  is  still  one  of  great  delicacy.  A 
close  observer  remarked  only  a  few  months  ago  that  multi- 
tudes of  the  Koreans  are  not  reconciled  to  Japanese  rule; 
that  they  simply  acquiesce  in  it  as  they  know  that  they  are 
helpless;  and  that  they  are  hoping  and  waiting  for  some 
other  nation  to  come  in  and  release  them.  If  the  mission- 
aries show  sympathy  with  the  Koreans,  they  arouse  the 
resentment  of  the  Japanese;  and  if  they  show  sympathy 
with  the  Japanese,  they  arouse  the  resentment  of  the  Ko- 
reans and  lose  their  influence  with  them.  It  is  a  case  of 
walking  a  tight  rope  between  the  devil  and  the  deep  sea. 
The  armchair  critic  ten  thousand  miles  away  may  well 
consider  whether  he  would  or  could  have  walked  as  straight 
as  the  missionaries  did.  They  have  borne  themselves  with 
remarkable  moderation,  dignity,  and  self-restraint.  They 
may  need  to  be  cautioned  and  advised  by  men  to  whom 
distance  can  give  greater  calmness  of  judgment;  but  such 
caution  and  advice  they  have  not  only  shown  themselves 
willing  to  receive,  but  they  have  earnestly  sought  them. 

It  is  not  true,  as  some  Japanese  newspapers  have  alleged, 
that  the  missionaries  are  anti-Japanese.  Prince  Ito  was 
well  satisfied  with  their  attitude  during  his  administration. 
He  personally  told  me  so  when  we  discussed  the  question 
together  during  my  second  visit.  When  a  Korean  official, 
Sung  Pyong-chun,  Minister  for  Home  Affairs  in  the  Korean 
Government,  was  reported  by  a  Tokyo  paper  as  having 
charged  that  Korean  Christians  "are  united  in  the  common 


THE  POLITICO-MISSIONARY  COMPLICATION     577 

object  of  opposing  the  present  administration  and  that 
they  are  backed  by  a  group  of  American  missionaries,"  the 
missionaries  in  Seoul  communicated  with  Mr.  Sung,  who 
denied  that  he  had  made  the  statement  attributed  to  him; 
and  the  Honorable  Thomas  J.  O'Brien,  then  American  Am- 
bassador to  Japan,  addressed  a  communication  to  Prince 
Ito,  asking  him  to  state  whether  he  had  any  reason  to  be- 
lieve that  the  statements  attributed  to  Mr.  Sung  were 
correct.  The  following  is  an  extract  from  Prince  Ito's 
reply:  "I  met  a  number  of  missionaries  at  Pyongyang, 
where  many  of  them  reside,  and  had  an  opportunity  to  as- 
certain that  they  not  only  take  no  steps  whatever  in  oppo- 
sition to  the  administration  of  the  Korean  Government, 
but  that  they  are  in  sympathy  with  the  new  regime  in- 
augurated after  the  establishment  of  the  Residency-General 
and  are  endeavoring  to  interpret  to  the  Korean  people  the 
true  purpose  of  that  regime.  I  am  personally  acquainted 
with  many  American  missionaries  stationed  at  Seoul,  with 
whose  conduct  and  views  I  am  fully  familiar.  The  fact 
that  they  are  in  sympathy  with  the  new  regime  in  Korea, 
and  that,  in  co-operation  with  the  Residency-General,  they 
are  endeavoring  to  enlighten  the  Korean  people,  does  not, 
I  trust,  require  any  special  confirmation." 

If  the  critics  of  missionaries  believe  that  this  situation 
was  altered  for  the  worse  under  subsequent  administrations, 
they  might  discreetly  ask  themselves  why  American,  Eng- 
lish, Canadian,  and  Australian  missionaries,  who  had  re- 
ceived such  high  indorsement  from  Prince  Ito,  were  led  to 
change  their  attitude.  The  Japanese  editor  of  the  Fukuin 
Shimpo,  of  Tokyo,  while  suggesting  that  "the  foreign  mis- 
sionaries in  Korea  seem  to  be  moved  by  various  baseless 
imaginations  resulting  from  a  misunderstanding  of  the 
facts,"  candidly  added:  "Nevertheless,  there  is  probably 
material  for  reflection  and  improvement  in  the  causes  and 
conditions  which  have  stirred  their  minds  to  such  a  degree, 
and  a  prompt  investigation  would  benefit  the  nation." 

However  just  may  have  been  the  intentions  of  the 
Japanese  Government,  the  administration  w  Korea  was 


578  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

plainly  interpreting  its  problem  in  terms  of  the  supposed 
military  necessities  of  the  Empire  in  occupying  an  exposed 
frontier.  Whatever  defense  may  be  made  of  this  as  a 
political  measure,  it  opened  a  nervous  prospect  to  the 
helpless  people  who  were  thus  subordinated  to  a  war  policy, 
and  to  the  missionaries  whose  influence  was  considered  an 
obstruction  to  the  military  purposes  for  which  the  country 
was  held.  A  large  number  of  Japanese  keenly  felt  the  un- 
fortunate position  into  which  the  peremptory  course  of  the 
gendarmerie  had  brought  their  country.  They  advocated  a 
more  humane  policy  and  the  wisdom  as  well  as  the  human- 
ity of  fair  and  conciliatory  treatment  of  the  Koreans.  They 
did  not  resent  the  friendly  interest  of  Western  peoples  in 
their  problems  and  in  the  effect  of  a  militaristic  policy  upon 
millions  of  people  in  whose  welfare  British  and  American 
Christians  have  been  deeply  interested  for  more  than  a 
quarter  of  a  century,  for  whom  they  have  undertaken  ex- 
tensive educational,  evangelistic,  and  medical  missionary 
work  which  the  Japanese  themselves  have  long  welcomed 
and  warmly  commended  in  their  own  country,  and  which 
many  Japanese  have  expressly  approved  and  encouraged 
in  Korea. 

The  question  of  Sunday  observance  has  also  caused  em- 
barrassment. Nowhere  else  in  the  world  is  the  day  more 
scrupulously  kept  by  Christian  people.  With  such  strict 
ideas  regarding  its  sanctity,  one  can  imagine  the  dismay 
when  Koreans,  Christians  included,  are  called  upon  by  the 
government  to  work  on  Sunday,  not  on  account  of  any 
extraordinary  emergency  of  war  or  fire  or  epidemic,  but  in 
ordinary  public  tasks.  The  Japanese  attitude  is  indicated 
by  the  following  extracts  from  the  reply  of  a  prominent 
government  official  to  complaints  on  this  subject:  "I  have 
recently  been  told  that  not  a  few  Korean  Christians  are  dis- 
satisfied with  the  authorities,  because  they  are  often  re- 
quired to  contribute  labor  on  Sundays,  and  schools  also 
not  infrequently  make  excursions  on  Sundays.  I  have 
also  been  told  that  certain  teachers  of  private  schools  re- 
fused to  attend  the  examination  for  private  school  teachers 


THE  POLITICO-MISSIONARY  COMPLICATION     579 

because  it  was  held  on  a  Sunday,  with  the  result  that  they 
lost  the  opportunity  to  take  the  examination.  I  am  very 
sorry  that  those  persons  fall  so  short  of  a  right  understand- 
ing of  conditions  in  Japan.  Japan  does  not  make  Chris- 
tianity her  national  religion.  It  is  no  wonder  then  that 
things  in  Japan,  whether  political,  educational,  or  social, 
are  not  necessarily  in  conformity  with  the  customs  of  West- 
ern Christian  countries.  It  is  true,  Sunday  is  observed  as 
a  holiday  by  government  offices  and  schools,  but  the  ob- 
servance has  no  religious  basis  in  it,  the  day  being  fixed 
simply  as  the  day  on  which  offices  or  schools  are  to  be 
closed.  In  the  same  sense,  banks  and  companies  also 
observe  Sunday  as  a  day  of  rest.  Under  the  circumstances, 
the  government,  as  well  as  schools,  is  quite  at  liberty  to 
make  any  use  of  Sunday,  if  the  authorities  consider  it 
necessary  to  do  so."  l 

This  explanation  will  doubtless  be  considered  quite  satis- 
factory by  those  who  hold  the  Prussian  idea  of  the  state — 
that  the  state  is  above  moral  obligation;  that  whatever  it 
does  is  right;  that  the  individual  subject  must  render  it 
implicit  obedience  irrespective  of  the  moral  quality  of  its 
acts;  that  one  can  be  a  Christian  as  a  private  person  and  at 
the  same  time  a  pagan  as  a  citizen;  and  that  religion  has 
nothing  to  do  with  politics  or  business.  The  missionaries, 
of  course,  realize  that  they  cannot  expect  the  Japanese 
Government  to  enforce  their  ideas  of  Sabbath  observance; 
but  they  are  unable  to  show  the  Korean  Christians  how  a 
man  can  divide  his  life  into  such  separate  water-tight  com- 
partments that  he  can  be  both  Christian  and  non-Christian 
at  the  same  time,  and  consistently  conform  to  each  of  two 
conflicting  standards  of  duty.  Of  course  difficulties  of 
this  sort  are  to  be  expected  in  a  land  where  the  prevailing 
religious  beliefs  differ  from  ours,  and  missionaries  and 
native  Christians  must  meet  them  as  best  they  can.  For- 
tunately, there  is  now  a  growing  disposition  on  the  part  of 
many  officials  to  be  as  considerate  as  possible  in  dealing 

1  Published  by  the  Seoul  Press,  June  22,  1916. 


580  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

with  the  conscientious  convictions  of  the  Korean  Christians 
when  the  latter  exercise  tact  in  presenting  their  case. 

Ordinance  No.  83  "prescribing  rules  for  the  conduct  of 
religious  propagation/'  promulgated  August  19,  1915,  and 
which  went  into  effect  the  1st  of  October  following,  does 
not  hi  itself  hamper  Christian  workers,  but  it  exposes  them 
to  the  misunderstanding  or  caprice  of  any  official  who  is 
inclined  to  be  exacting  or  suspicious.  The  missionaries  at 
first  were  greatly  concerned,  and  the  Federal  Council  of  the 
missions  in  Korea,  at  its  annual  meeting  in  October,  1915, 
appointed  a  committee  to  confer  with  Mr.  Usami,  Director 
of  the  Bureau  of  Internal  Affairs  and  of  Religion.  He  re- 
ceived the  committee  very  cordially,  and  the  Council,  on 
hearing  its  report,  voted  to  "record  our  pleasure  that  our 
apprehensions  have  been  allayed."  An  amendment  to 
substitute  the  word  "removed"  for  "allayed"  was  voted 
down.  The  rules  are  numerous,  and  a  good  deal  of  time 
is  required  to  carry  them  into  effect  and  to  make  all  the 
detailed  reports  that  they  call  for.  No  special  harm  has 
resulted,  but  Christian  workers,  both  native  and  foreign, 
understand  that  the  path  of  governmental  favor,  like  the 
path  of  eternal  life,  is  straight  and  narrow. 

A  comparatively  minor  question,  and  yet  one  involving 
many  perplexities,  arises  from  the  fact  that  the  missionary 
boards  operating  in  Korea  own  many  pieces  of  church  prop- 
erty, the  titles  to  which,  in  most  cases,  were  secured  years 
ago  when  Korea  was  in  a  chaotic  condition.  The  titles  were 
obtained  under  Korean  customs  and  laws,  and  do  not  ac- 
cord with  the  requirements  of  Japanese  laws.  Deeds  issued 
prior  to  the  annexation  are  not  recognized  as  valid  by  the 
Government-General  but  must  be  presented  to  a  Japanese 
official  with  proofs  of  ownership,  when  a  new  deed  will  be 
given.  These  proofs  are  not  always  easy  to  produce,  as  a 
given  tract  may  have  been  made  up  of  half  a  dozen  or 
more  small  pieces  that  were  bought  from  as  many  different 
Koreans,  as  some  of  the  original  owners  may  not  be  living, 
and  as  the  papers  that  they  gave  may  have  been  of  a  kind 
that  a  careful  Japanese  official  does  not  find  satisfactory 


THE  POLITICO-MISSIONARY  COMPLICATION     581 

from  the  view-point  of  present-day  legal  procedure.  In  the 
case  of  the  campus  of  a  large  school,  more  than  six  years  of 
effort  on  the  part  of  the  missionaries  did  not  succeed  in 
securing  a  new  deed  from  the  Japanese  Government.  In- 
terested parties  might  make  no  small  trouble  if  these  prop- 
erty rights  were  to  be  challenged  under  the  strict  provisions 
of  Japanese  statutes.  The  properties  were  acquired  in 
good  faith,  were  obtained  from  the  original  owners  by  fair 
purchase,  and  whatever  defects  there  are  in  the  titles  were 
not  the  fault  of  the  missionaries  but  were  due  to  existing 
conditions  at  the  time.  The  missionaries  have  worked  hard 
to  try  to  get  these  titles  into  satisfactory  shape,  and  have 
measurably  succeeded  in  some  stations,  but  in  others  many 
properties  are  still  in  an  unsatisfactory  condition. 

It  is  an  awkward  and  embarrassing  fact  that  negotiations 
with  the  authorities  regarding  Korean  religious  matters 
have  to  be  conducted  by  foreigners.  Whenever  a  question 
affecting  Christian  work  develops  in  Japan,  there  are  able 
Japanese  Christians  who  can  handle  it  directly  with  their 
own  government.  The  time  will  come  when  this  course 
can  be  taken  in  Korea;  but,  unfortunately,  it  cannot  be 
taken  yet.  Korea  and  Japan  differ  as  widely  in  religious 
conditions  as  Mr.  Komatsu  states  that  they  differ  in  educa- 
tional conditions;  and  just  as  he  has  said  that  "the  opinion 
that  the  same  educational  policy  as  pursued  in  Japan  should 
be  applied  to  Korea  emanates  from  an  erroneous  concep- 
tion of  conditions  existing  in  the  two  different  parts  of  the 
country,"  so  we  may  say  in  respect  of  the  present  question 
that  a  method  of  procedure  which  can  be  adopted  in  Japan 
cannot  now  be  adopted  in  Korea.  The  missionary  represen- 
tatives have  no  alternative,  therefore,  but  to  confer  with 
the  authorities  themselves  in  spite  of  the  delicacies  that 
inhere  in  the  fact  that  they  are  citizens  of  other  countries. 
Americans  are  at  a  special  disadvantage,  since  the  Japanese 
Imperial  Government  can  point  to  objectionable  discrimina- 
tion against  its  subjects  in  California.  These  considera- 
tions render  it  all  the  more  vital  that  we  should  show  the 
most  scrupulous  regard  for  the  dignity  of  the  Government- 


582  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

General,  and  make  perfectly  evident  that  we  have  no  desire 
whatever  to  intervene  between  it  and  its  own  subjects. 
On  the  other  hand,  high  Japanese  officials,  by  conferring 
with  missionaries  and  representatives  of  mission  boards, 
frankly  recognize  that,  in  the  peculiar  circumstances  that 
prevail,  the  missions  and  boards  have  a  legitimate  status 
as  one  of  the  factors  in  the  pending  problem. 

Not  to  dwell  further  on  these  phases  of  the  question,  let 
us  ask:  What  can  be  done  to  promote  satisfactory  rela- 
tions between  the  missionaries  and  the  Japanese  in  Korea? 
The  boards  frankly  recognize  that  there  are  some  things 
which  they  and  the  missionaries  can  do,  or  rather  con- 
tinue to  do:  cultivate  friendly  relations  with  Japanese 
officials  who  are  willing  to  be  on  such  terms  with 
them;  scrupulously  respect  and  obey,  and  teach  the 
Korean  Christians  to  respect  and  obey,  the  lawfully  con- 
stituted authorities;  limit  their  activities  to  missionary 
duties  and  keep  themselves  and,  as  far  as  possible,  the 
Korean  churches  wholly  apart  from  all  political  matters; 
take  any  necessary  complaints  directly  to  the  Japanese 
and  not  to  the  consular  or  diplomatic  representatives  of  their 
respective  governments — save  when  their  treaty  rights  as 
American  or  British  citizens  have  been  violated,  and  even 
then  not  unless  the  violation  was  very  serious;  refuse  to  shield 
any  Koreans  who,  although  calling  themselves  Christians, 
are  justly  accused  of  crime;  recognize  the  Japanese  nation 
as  the  absolute  legal  master  of  Korea,  which,  on  the  whole, 
means  well  and  which  should  be  helped  and  not  hindered 
in  all  its  legitimate  policies  and  methods;  and,  finally,  en- 
courage such  relations  between  Korean  and  Japanese 
Christians  as  will  tend  to  unite  the  two  peoples  in  bonds 
of  amity. 

Japan's  purpose  to  assimilate  Korea  in  population  and 
sentiment  as  well  as  in  territory  merits  our  sincere  good- 
will. It  is  a  legitimate  national  policy,  and  mission  workers 
should  accommodate  themselves  to  it  and  scrupulously 
avoid  acts  and  utterances  that  are  incompatible  with  it. 
In  short,  they  should  bear  in  mind  that  the  Japanese  are 


THE  POLITICO-MISSIONARY  COMPLICATION     583 

trying  to  amalgamate  Korea  and  Japan  and  that  they 
will  resent  any  foreign  influence  which  separates  religiously 
and  educationally  peoples  whom  they  are  determined  to 
unify  politically.  Korea  is  the  broad  highway  from  Japan 
to  Manchuria,  to  China,  to  Russian  territory,  to  the  inter- 
national opportunities  that  Japan  covets  and  the  interna- 
tional dangers  that  she  fears.  Influence  with  the  new 
Chinese  Republic  is  the  ambition  of  all  the  world-powers. 
With  most  of  them  active  in  China,  the  Japanese  naturally 
feel  that  an  unobstructed  Korea  is  an  absolute  necessity  of 
their  national'life  and  that  they  cannot  permit  any  anti- 
Japanese  element  in  it,  or  look  with  unconcern  upon  any 
organization,  however  neutral,  which  is  not  amenable  to 
their  control.  Whether  we  like  this  or  not,  the  fact  must 
be  squarely  faced.  We  are  not  dealing  with  peoples  who, 
like  Englishmen  and  Americans,  are  good-naturedly  willing 
to  allow  their  subjects  to  do  almost  anything  they  please 
short  of  open  revolt;  but  we  are  dealing  with  Asiatics  to 
whom  freedom  of  speech,  the  rights  of  man,  the  privilege 
of  peaceable  assemblage,  and  the  separation  of  church  and 
state  are  comparatively  new  conceptions,  and  who  will 
not  condone  in  Korea  what  Americans  indifferently  over- 
look in  the  Philippines.  Acts  that  look  to  us  like  deliberate 
hostility  to  Christianity  may  not  be  so  intended.  We 
must  recur  again  and  again  to  the  interpretative  fact  that 
Japan  is  not  a  democracy  but  a  paternal  autocracy,  which 
regulates  the  lives  of  its  subjects,  which  wants  to  know  what 
they  do  and  say,  and  which  brings  every  activity  under 
careful  scrutiny  and  precise  regulations.  Missions  and 
churches  are  watched  and  regulated  just  as  everything  else 
is.  We  should  not,  therefore,  infer  enmity  from  acts  which 
appear  arbitrary  from  the  view-point  of  a  Western  democ- 
racy which  gives  itself  no  concern  whatever  about  the  activi- 
ties of  religious  and  educational  organizations  so  long  as 
they  keep  within  the  broadest  general  limits  of  law  and 
order. 

We  frankly  admit  that  there  are  deeply  rooted  difficul- 
ties in  the  whole  situation.    Conquerors  and  conquered 


584  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

have  seldom  mingled  as  equals  anywhere  in  the  world,  and 
then  only  after  the  lapse  of  many  generations.  In  the 
Philippine  Islands,  a  wide  social  chasm  has  opened  between 
Americans  and  Filipinos,  and  missionaries  are  fast  becom- 
ing the  only  class  which  associates  with  the  people  on  terms 
of  equality.  Japanese  and  Koreans  are  separated  by  deep 
racial,  linguistic,  hereditary,  and  temperamental  differences, 
and  by  social  prejudices  as  stubborn  as  those  which  divided 
Jews  and  Samaritans  of  old.  Now  that  the  Koreans  are 
beginning  to  adopt  Japanese  dress,  the  physical  difference 
between  the  two  peoples  is  becoming  less  marked,  and  of 
late  years  intermarriages  have  become  more  common.  An 
eminent  Japanese  has  expressed  the  opinion  that  inter- 
marriage will  eventually  solve  this  problem.  But  at  pres- 
ent, while  many  Japanese  are  kind  to  the  Koreans,  as  the 
best  Japanese  are,  it  is  apt  to  be  with  the  type  of  kindness 
which  characterizes  a  Georgia  gentleman  toward  a  negro. 
The  Georgian  may  be  a  friend  and  benefactor  of  the  negro, 
but  he  does  not  consider  himself  on  the  latter's  level.  The 
Korean  resents  this  attitude  even  more  than  the  negro  does, 
for  his  ancestry  is  not  one  of  slavery  and  African  barbarism 
but  of  the  traditions  of  a  proud  and  ancient  nation.  He 
feels  that  Korea  is  the  land  of  his  fathers  and  that  the 
Japanese  are  aliens  who  have  no  right  there  except  on  the 
low  plane  of  physical  force.  Is  unity  of  feeling  to  be  reason- 
ably expected  in  such  circumstances?  It  is  notorious  that 
the  white  man  the  world  over  deems  himself  superior  to 
men  of  other  races,  and  that  even  missionaries  have  not 
always  succeeded  in  preventing  the  development  of  social 
cleavage  between  their  own  families  and  native  Christians. 
We  should  therefore  be  slow  to  criticise  the  Japanese  for  an 
attitude  which  we  also  have  to  struggle  to  overcome. 

There  is  also  something  that  the  Japanese  can  do:  seek 
a  better  knowledge  of  what  the  missionaries  and  churches 
really  are  and  are  doing;  study  the  beneficial  changes  that 
Christianity  has  wrought  in  the  lives  of  the  people;  realize 
that  good  men  who  try  to  conform  their  lives  to  the  teach- 
ings of  Christ  are  never  a  hindrance  to  the  state  but  are  an 


THE  POLITICO-MISSIONARY  COMPLICATION     585 

asset  of  enormous  value;  consider  that  a  missionary's  criti- 
cism of  injustice  on  the  part  of  some  Japanese  is  not  to  be 
construed  as  antagonism  to  Japan  as  a  nation  or  a  reflec- 
tion upon  its  honor;  and  cease  to  deal  with  the  Korean 
Christians  through  the  kind  of  gendarmes  and  judges  who 
brought  about  "The  Korean  Conspiracy  Case"  and  per- 
verted the  wise  policy  of  Prince  Ito  and  the  good  inten- 
tions of  the  Japanese  people  into  a  policy  of  espionage  and 
intimidation.  The  situation  in  Korea  undoubtedly  requires 
a  firm  government;  but  the  firmness  should  be  that  of 
modern  statesmanship  and  not  that  of  a  feudalism  which 
would  reproduce  in  Korea  conditions  which  the  Japanese 
abolished  in  Japan  more  than  a  generation  ago.  Ameri- 
cans, who  remember  with  shame  how  their  own  local 
officials  once  treated  the  Indians  and  the  conquered  Southern 
people  after  the  Civil  War  in  the  United  States,  may  humbly 
hope  that  the  Japanese  will  learn  from  our  bitter  experience 
that  the  soldier's  rifle  and  the  policeman's  club  do  not  make 
loyal  citizens  of  a  defeated  people. 


CHAPTER  XXXV 
JAPANESE  NATIONALISM  AND  MISSION  SCHOOLS 

THE  considerations  described  in  the  chapter  on  "The 
Politico-Missionary  Complication  in  Korea"  have  found 
another  and  more  serious  illustration  in  the  restrictions 
which  the  Japanese  Government  has  imposed  upon  mission 
schools.  The  resultant  situation  has  aroused  such  wide- 
spread interest  in  the  educational  as  well  as  the  missionary 
world,  and  it  throws  so  much  light  on  political  conditions 
that  it  merits  careful  study. 

In  carrying  out  their  policy  of  assimilating  Korea  with 
Japan,  the  Japanese  did  not  fail  to  perceive  the  difficulty 
of  changing  the  attitude  of  mature  men  who  have  been 
moulded  by  the  traditions  of  their  own  race,  and  who  have 
personal  memories  of  the  tumults  and  sorrows  that  attended 
the  subjugation  of  their  native  land.  But  if  the  children 
could  be  trained  to  the  altered  conditions,  a  single  genera- 
tion would  see  the  desired  change  in  sentiment.  The  Japa- 
nese therefore  turned  their  attention  to  the  schools.  Doctor 
Tan  Shidehara,  who  had  been  educational  adviser  to  the 
Korean  Government,  was  instructed  to  study  the  educa- 
tional systems  of  America  and  Europe  and  to  report  upon 
their  adaptation  to  dependent  peoples.  The  Imperial  Edu- 
cation Society  of  Japan  announced  that  the  purpose  of  the 
government  was  to  extend  to  the  people  of  Korea  the  prin- 
ciples of  national  education,  as  set  forth  in  the  Imperial 
Rescript  of  1890,  in  such  a  manner  as  to  make  the  Koreans 
understand  that  the  union  of  the  two  countries  came  about 
inevitably  as  a  consequence  both  of  their  historic  associa- 
tion and  of  their  geographical  position;  to  inspire  in  them 
the  hope  of  playing  a  noble  part  as  Japanese  subjects  on  the 
present  and  future  stage  of  world-civilization;  to  bring 

586 


NATIONALISM  AND  MISSION  SCHOOLS          587 

them  to  an  intelligent  comprehension  of  the  need,  under 
existing  conditions,  of  the  general  use  of  the  Japanese  lan- 
guage; and  to  create  a  new  bureau  under  the  direct  control 
of  the  Governor-General  to  undertake  the  important  work 
of  compiling  special  text-books  for  Korean  schools.  This 
programme  was  energetically  undertaken.  Free  public 
schools  were  opened  under  Japanese  teachers  and  Korean 
parents  were  urged  to  send  then-  children  to  them. 

The  Japanese  soon  discovered,  however,  that  their  schools 
were  not  popular  with  the  Koreans.  This  was  partly  be- 
cause parents  hesitated  to  put  then*  children  under  alien 
conquerors  whose  purpose  was  to  wean  them  away  from 
their  national  ideas,  customs,  and  language,  and  turn  them 
into  Japanese;  partly  because  most  parents  who  coveted  a 
modern  education  for  their  sons  and  daughters  were  already 
sending  them  to  the  mission  schools,  where  they  were  edu- 
cated in  their  own  language  as  Koreans;  and  partly  because 
many  parents  were  Christians  who  wanted  their  children 
trained  under  strong  religious  influence.  Indeed,  nearly  all 
the  elementary  village  schools  were  church  schools,  directly 
connected  with  and  supported  by  the  local  congregations. 
The  school  usually  occupies  a  church  building  and  is  an 
integral  part  of  church  activities.  Pupils  who  complete  the 
course  of  these  elementary  schools  go  to  the  mission  acad- 
emies and  boarding-schools  at  the  central  stations,  from 
which  in  due  time  they  can  go  to  a  mission  college,  so  that 
their  entire  training  is  under  religious  auspices.  Most 
serious  of  all,  from  the  view-point  of  the  Japanese,  is  the 
fact  that  this  whole  educational  system  is  either  directly 
controlled,  as  in  the  case  of  the  academies  and  boarding- 
schools,  or  indirectly  influenced,  as  in  the  case  of  the  ele- 
mentary church  schools,  by  foreigners — American  mission- 
aries. 

At  this  point  another  factor  must  be  taken  into  account. 
The  Japanese  regard  education  as  a  function  of  the  state; 
not  in  the  sense  of  Great  Britain  and  the  United  States, 
which  deem  it  their  duty  to  provide  free  education  for  those 
who  need  or  desire  it,  but  in  the  sense  that  the  state  must 


588  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

absolutely  control  the  education  of  its  people  in  order  to 
train  them  for  the  ends  of  the  state.  Schools  are  regarded 
as  agencies  of  the  state  like  the  courts  and  the  army.  It 
is  intolerable  from  the  Japanese  view-point  that  subjects  of 
the  Empire  should  be  educated  in  private  institutions  over 
which  the  government  has  no  control  and  in  which  they 
may  be  taught  anything  that  the  teachers  please,  especially 
when,  as  in  Korea,  these  teachers  are  foreigners  who  owe 
allegiance  to  another  government  and  who  are  suspected 
of  lack  of  sympathy  with  the  authorities  of  the  country. 
The  government  position  appears  to  be:  It  is  the  duty  of 
the  church  to  preach  and  the  duty  of  the  state  to  teach. 
Missionaries  may  have  unlimited  freedom  in  evangeliza- 
tion, but  they  should  leave  education  to  the  government. 
If  they  insist  upon  having  schools,  they  must  make  them 
conform  to  the  government  schools  in  curriculum,  in  quali- 
fications of  teachers,  and  in  the  exclusion  of  religion;  for 
the  schools  of  the  state  must  be  secular  with  no  religious 
exercises,  whether  Buddhist  or  Christian. 

Mission  schools  in  Japan  proper  had  some  trouble  for  a 
time  over  the  outworking  of  this  fundamental  principle. 
Graduates  of  the  government  schools  have  certain  highly 
prized  privileges,  such  as  exemption  from  conscription  in 
the  army,  admission  to  the  Imperial  University  and  the 
government  technical  and  professional  schools,  and  eligi- 
bility to  many  civil,  military,  and  naval  positions  that  are 
coveted  by  patriotic  Japanese.  These  privileges  had  been 
extended  to  mission  and  other  private  schools  which  con- 
formed to  the  government  regulations  and  submitted  to 
inspection.  These  schools  were  free  to  teach  religion.  But 
August  3,  1899,  Count  Kabayama,  the  Minister  of  State 
for  Education  in  Japan,  issued  the  following  order: 

"It  being  essential  from  the  point  of  view  of  educational  adminis- 
tration that  general  education  should  be  independent  of  religion,  re- 
ligious instruction  must  not  be  given  or  religious  ceremonies  performed 
at  government  schools,  public  schools  or  schools  whose  curricula  are 
regulated  by  provisions  of  law,  even  outside  the  regular  course  of 
instruction." 


NATIONALISM  AND  MISSION  SCHOOLS  589 

This  confronted  mission  schools  with  the  alternative  of 
abandoning  religious  instruction  or  relinquishing  their  gov- 
ernment registration,  with  the  resultant  forfeiture  of  the 
privileges  which  registration  carried.  It  was  feared  that 
young  men  would  not  attend  schools  whose  diplomas 
would  debar  them  from  so  much  that  they  valued.  But 
the  majority  of  missionaries  and  boards  held  that  compli- 
ance would  secularize  their  schools;  that  they  should  not 
use  missionary  funds  for  secular  education;  and  that  mis- 
sion educational  work  was  distinctively  for  Christ  and  the 
church.  A  committee  consisting  of  seven  eminent  Japanese 
Christians  and  seven  representative  missionaries  of  various 
communions  presented  a  protest  to  Count  Kabayama,  the 
Vice-Minister,  Mr.  Okuda,  and  the  Counsellor  of  the  De- 
partment, Mr.  Okada.  The  published  report  of  the  com- 
mittee indicated  the  frankness  and  earnestness  with  which 
the  protest  was  urged,  the  protestants  declaring:  "It  is  a 
conviction  of  conscience  with  the  friends  of  the  schools 
which  we  represent  that  instruction  in  religion  is  essential 
to  education,  both  as  a  matter  of  knowledge  and  also  as 
the  most  effective  incentive  to  right  living.  The  Instruc- 
tion of  the  Department  of  Education  compels  us  either  to 
surrender  this  conviction  or  to  subject  the  students  attend- 
ing our  schools  to  serious  disadvantages.  .  .  .  That  such 
an  instruction  infringes  upon  the  principle  of  religious  lib- 
erty is  clear  to  every  thoughtful  mind." 

The  committee  was  most  courteously  received,  but  the 
officials  were  inflexible  in  the  conviction  that  the  regula- 
tion must  be  enforced.  The  result  was  that  many  mission 
schools  saw  their  attendance  dwindle  to  a  handful,  and  it 
looked  for  a  time  as  if  the  end  of  mission  educational  work 
in  Japan  had  come.  But  the  protest  of  missionaries  and 
Japanese  Christians  was  vigorously  taken  up  by  the  mis- 
sionary societies  and  their  supporters  in  Great  Britain  and 
America.  The  Japanese  authorities  were  finally  convinced 
that  a  mistake  had  been  made  and  the  regulation  was  grad- 
ually allowed  to  drop  out  of  sight.  In  the  words  of  a  dis- 
tinguished Japanese  Christian  educator:  "In  order  to  main- 


590  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

tain  the  principle  of  religious  liberty,  we  gave  up  important 
privileges.  But  by  patiently  laying  the  matter  before  the 
authorities,  we  have  succeeded  in  regaining  one  by  one 
the  lost  privileges;  so  that  finally  the  difference  between 
the  government  middle  school  and  our  middle  school  de- 
partment is  less  than  nominal.  Even  the  names  are  al- 
most identical.  The  one  is  Chugakko,  and  the  other  is 
Chugaku-bu."  Since  then,  mission  schools  in  Japan  have 
had  comparatively  little  trouble.  Schools  that  make  re- 
ligious instruction  and  chapel  services  compulsory  cannot 
obtain  government  registration,  but  schools  that  make  them 
voluntary  can  register  and  teach  the  Bible  and  conduct 
religious  services  as  freely  as  they  please.  Most  of  the 
mission  schools  have  adopted  this  course,  with  the  gratify- 
ing result  that  about  four-fifths  of  the  students  elect  to 
take  religious  teaching. 

This  happy  result  was  doubtless  due,  in  some  degree  at 
least,  to  the  fact  that  the  schools  in  Japan  are  for  the  Japa- 
nese themselves,  that  they  are  few  in  number  as  compared 
with  the  thousands  of  public  schools,  and  that,  as  a  rule,  they 
are  not  elementary  schools  or  colleges.  The  government  has 
the  lower  and  higher  educational  fields  almost  wholly  to 
itself,  and  the  limited  number  of  mission  institutions  of  in- 
termediate grade,  while  excellent  in  character,  are,  in  the 
estimation  of  the  government,  not  relatively  numerous 
enough  to  form  a  serious  factor  in  the  educational  system 
of  the  country. 

In  Korea,  however,  different  conditions  prevail.  Here  is 
an  outlying  dependency,  occupied  by  a  conquered  people  of 
different  race  and  resentful  attitude,  which  the  government 
is  trying  to  assimilate;  numerous  and  flourishing  schools 
which  had  grown  up  under  Korean  rule  and  are  believed  to 
require  considerable  modification  to  make  them  pro-Japa- 
nese instead  of  pro-Korean;  and,  most  disturbing  of  all, 
the  greater  part  of  the  educational  system  in  the  hands  of 
foreigners.  It  is  true  that  of  2,080  private  schools  at  the 
time  of  annexation,  only  778  were  officially  listed  as  mission 
schools.  But  save  for  a  few  notable  exceptions,  the  others 


NATIONALISM  AND  MISSION  SCHOOLS          591 

were  of  small  consequence,  a  negligible  factor  from  the 
view-point  of  modern  educational  character.  What  more 
natural  therefore  than  that  the  Japanese  should  concern 
themselves  with  this  situation,  try  to  get  education  into 
their  own  hands,  and  open  public  schools  ?  Hence  the  edu- 
cational Ordinances  promulgated  March  24,  1915. 

With  a  courteous  desire  to  make  these  regulations  availa- 
ble for  English  readers  and  to  explain  their  character  and 
purpose,  the  Honorable  M.  Komatsu  wrote  to  me  about 
them  on  April  8  and  November  4, 1915,  enclosing  with  the 
former  letter  a  detailed  explanation  that  he  had  published 
in  the  Seoul  Press  of  April  2  and  3  of  that  year  under  the 
caption:  "Separation  of  Education  and  Religion."  The 
Honorable  Teisaburo  Sekiya,  Director  of  the  Bureau  of 
Education,  also  published  articles  in  the  Nagasaki  Press 
of  March  30,  1915,  and  the  Japan  Advertiser  of  August  7; 
and  the  Honorable  K.  Usami,  Minister  of  Home  Affairs, 
made  further  public  statements  in  the  Seoul  Press  of  March 
17,  18,  19,  and  21,  1915.  These  "Ordinances,"  "Instruc- 
tions," and  "Regulations"  and  the  official  explanations  of 
them  will  be  memorable  in  the  history  of  missions  and  of 
education.  We  need  not  write  of  them  in  detail,  as  most  of 
them  relate  to  questions  of  inspection,  curriculum,  grade 
of  work,  qualifications  of  teachers,  and  other  matters  about 
which  missionaries  raise  no  question.  Many  of  the  rules 
are  excellent,  indicating  careful  study  of  modern  educational 
methods  and  intelligence  in  applying  them.  Others,  how- 
ever, have  caused  deep  concern  to  missionaries  and  mission 
boards,  as  they  appear  to  forbid  all  religious  teaching  and 
services  in  mission  as  well  as  government  schools. 

We  are  trying  to  be  fair  to  the  Japanese  point  of  view, 
and  that  we  are  not  misrepresenting  it  will  appear  from  the 
following  extracts  from  the  government  regulations  and 
from  official  interpretations  and  applications  of  them: 

"In  such  schools  (private),  no  religious  teaching  is  permitted  to  be 
included  in  their  curricula  nor  can  religious  ceremonies  be  allowed  to 
be  performed."  (Instructions  concerning  the  revision  and  enforce- 


592  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

ment  of  the  private  school  regulations,  issued  by  the  Government- 
General,  March  24,  1915.) 

"The  principle  of  the  separation  of  education  and  religion  is  abso- 
lutely necessary  in  Korea.  .  .  .  The  enforcement  of  the  principle 
.  .  .  does  not  admit  of  any  objections  or  criticism  by  anybody,  native 
or  foreign.  .  .  .  The  recent  amendment  made  in  the  regulations  for 
private  schools  is  nothing  more  or  less  than  a  step  taken  for  attaining 
the  aim  of  assimilation  by  directing  and  unifying  the  trend  of  the 
popular  mind.  Accordingly  it  has  been  provided  in  the  regulations 
that  all  schools  engaged  in  national  (general)  education,  no  matter 
whether  they  be  government,  public,  or  private  establishments,  should 
conform  to  the  educational  policy  fixed  by  the  government."  (The 
Honorable  M.  Komatsu,  in  the  Seoul  Press,  April  2  and  3,  and  No- 
vember 25,  1915.) 

"The  authorities  are  very  appreciative  of  the  valuable  contributions 
made  by  religious  schools  in  Korea  to  the  development  of  civilization 
and  education,  but  they  cannot  allow  the  present  state  of  education 
in  Korea  to  continue  for  long.  .  .  .  Private  schools  are  required  to 
fix  their  curricula  in  accordance  with  regulations  controlling  public 
common  schools,  higher  common  schools,  or  government  special 
schools,  it  being  also  prohibited  to  them  to  include  any  course  of  study 
other  than  those  authorized  by  these  regulations.  In  consequence, 
in  all  these  schools  it  is  prohibited  to  give  religious  education  or  to 
observe  religious  rites."  (The  Honorable  Teisaburo  Sekiya,  in  the 
Nagasaki  Press,  March  30,  1915.) 

"The  Government-General,  in  carrying  into  effect  the  Educational 
Ordinance  for  Korea,  announces  that  not  only  government  and  public 
schools  but  also  private  schools,  whose  curricula  are  fixed  by  pro- 
visions of  law,  shall  not  be  permitted  to  give  religious  instruction  or 
conduct  religious  ceremonies."  (The  Official  Gazette,  Tokyo,  March 
29,  1915.) 

Mission  schools  which  had  a  government  permit  when 
the  regulations  were  announced  were  given  ten  years  in 
which  to  adapt  themselves  to  the  new  requirements.  Other 
schools  were  required  to  conform  or  close.  The  Presby- 
terian Academy  for  girls  at  Syenchyun,  and  the  Southern 
Presbyterian  Academy  for  girls  at  Soonchun,  although 
established  before  the  law  went  into  effect,  had  not  received 
their  permits  on  account  of  technical  delays.  The  mission- 
aries felt  that  they  could  not  conduct  mission  schools  with- 
out Bible  teaching  and  chapel  services,  and  the  Japanese 
magistrates  closed  both  institutions,  the  Soonchun  official 


NATIONALISM  AND  MISSION  SCHOOLS  593 

order  reading:  "Your  having  no  intention  of  removing  re- 
ligion from  the  curriculum  and  making  application  to  estab- 
lish becomes  clearly  disobedience  to  the  established  law. 
Therefore  from  this  time  on  I  am  ordered  to  forbid  instruc- 
tions therein.  I  also  have  these  instructions  from  high 
authorities,  which  I  transmit  to  you."  Three  policemen 
went  to  the  school  the  same  day  to  see  that  this  order  was 
enforced.  An  order  to  the  same  effect  was  issued  by  the 
magistrate  at  Syenchyun  to  the  Girls'  Academy  in  that  city. 
The  missionaries  in  both  stations  felt  that  they  ought  not 
to  conduct  mission  schools  without  Bible  teaching  and 
chapel  services,  and  so  the  academies  were  closed. 

The  following  statements  apparently  indicated  a  disposi- 
tion to  carry  to  its  logical  conclusion  the  principle  that 
education  should  be  deemed  exclusively  a  function  of  the 
state  and  that  mission  schools  should  be  eliminated: 

"The  undertaking  of  general  educational  work  by  the  missions  in 
Korea  is  a  temporary  work  of  expedience,  and  along  with  the  comple- 
tion of  the  general  educational  system  by  the  government,  mission 
schools  will  gradually  decrease  in  number  or  lose  their  raison  d'etre. 
...  It  is  not  quite  unlikely  that  in  six  or  seven  years  to  come  there 
will  be  no  mission  schools  in  Korea  undertaking  common  education." 
(Letter  of  the  Honorable  M.  Komatsu,  November  4,  1915.) 

"Our  object  of  education  is  not  only  to  develop  the  intellect  and 
morality  of  our  people  but  also  to  foster  in  their  minds  such  national 
spirit  as  will  contribute  to  the  existence  and  welfare  of  our  Empire. 
Accordingly  we  are  resolved  to  maintain  an  absolute  independence  in 
regard  to  our  policy  and  system  concerning  national  education, 
which  we  formulate  and  put  into  effect  by  ourselves  without  foreign 
interference  or  assistance.  It  follows  then  that  educational  work 
inaugurated  by  Foreign  Missions  in  the  days  of  the  former  Korean 
Government  must  be  modified  to-day  so  as  to  keep  pace  with  the  prog- 
ress of  our  plan  to  carry  out  modern  administrative  measures.  I  sin- 
cerely hope  that  you  will  appreciate  this^  change  of  the  tune  and  under- 
stand that  missions  should  leave  all  affairs  relating  to  education  entirely 
in  the  hands  of  the  government  by  transferring  the  money  and  labor 
they  have  hitherto  been  expending  on  education  to  their  proper  sphere 
of  religious  propagation.  .  .  .  Whatever  the  curriculum  of  a  school 
may  be,  it  is  natural  that  the  students  of  that  school  should  be  influ- 
enced by  the  ideas  and  personal  character  of  its  principal  and  teach- 
ers. Education  must  be  decidedly  nationalistic  and  must  not  be 


594  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

mixed  up  with  religion  that  is  universal.  .  .  .  While  the  propagation 
of  religion  must  belong  solely  to  the  control  of  the  church,  educational 
work  must  entirely  come  under  that  of  the  government.  .  .  .  Pre- 
cisely as  the  government  should  not  interfere  with  religion,  so  the 
church  should  not  interfere  with  political  administration  in  general 
and  education,  which  is  part  of  the  administrative  work,  in  particular." 
(The  Honorable  M.  Komatsu  in  the  Seoul  Press,  April  3,  1915.) 

The  dismay  of  the  missionaries  can  be  easily  imagined. 
They  felt  that  to  forbid  religious  teaching  in  mission  schools 
was  equivalent  to  a  denial  of  that  educational  and  re- 
ligious freedom  which  they  had  supposed  that  it  was  the 
pride  of  Japan  to  accord.  A  mission  school  that  is  not 
permitted  to  have  Bible  study  does  not  possess  educational 
freedom,  and  religion  that  is  not  permitted  to  teach  the 
Bible  in  its  own  schools  is  not  free.  The  Federated  Council 
of  Missions  in  Korea,  in  September,  1915,  adopted  with 
only  one  dissenting  vote  a  resolution  which  declared  that 
"The  Federal  Council  feels  itself  called  upon,  in  view  of  the 
interests  of  its  home  constituency,  the  purpose  for  which 
alone  its  members  reside  in  this  land  and  the  object  for 
which  the  funds  used  to  maintain  schools  are  contributed, 
to  affirm  that  in  our  judgment  the  conditions  would  cripple 
if  not  completely  close  our  Christian  schools." 

Those  who  were  inclined  to  place  the  most  favorable 
construction  upon  a  governmental  policy,  sought  to  reas- 
sure themselves  in  three  ways. 

The  first  was  the  belief  that  mission  schools  could  count 
upon  the  same  measure  of  freedom  in  Korea  that  they 
have  long  enjoyed  in  Japan,  and  that  the  new  regulations 
should  be  interpreted  by  our  experience  there.  This  belief 
was  soon  seen  to  be  illusory.  "In  Japan  proper,"  wrote  a 
missionary,  "if  the  mission  school  conforms  to  the  govern- 
ment system,  it  has  certain  privileges  which  other  schools 
do  not  have.  It  may,  however,  continue  to  operate  if  it 
does  not  conform,  in  which  case  it  has  the  utmost  freedom 
of  religious  instruction  in  its  curriculum.  The  option  given 
is:  'Conform  or  stay  out.'  In  Korea  the  option  is:  'Con- 
form or  close  up.'  One  is  an  option  of  permission,  the  other 


NATIONALISM  AND  MISSION  SCHOOLS  595 

an  option  of  suppression.  No  liberty  of  choice  is  given. 
It  is  secularize  or  go  out  of  business."  Mr.  Komatsu 
frankly  recognized  and  defended  this  fundamental  distinc- 
tion in  the  following  declaration: 

"I  often  hear  that  some  missionaries  in  Korea  entertain  the  opinion 
that  the  same  educational  policy  as  pursued  in  Japan  should  be  ap- 
plied to  Korea  and  the  same  privilege  as  extended  to  mission  schools 
in  the  mother  country  be  extended  to  similar  institutions  in  the 
peninsula.  This  opinion,  I  do  not  hesitate  to  say,  emanates  from  an 
erroneous  conception  of  conditions  existing  in  the  two  different  parts 
of  the  country.  .  .  .  Should  Korea  attain  the  same  stage  of  progress 
as  in  Japan,  there  can  be  no  room  for  disputing  about  the  matter; 
but  inasmuch  as  the  educational  conditions  in  the  two  parts  are  widely 
different,  it  is  altogether  unreasonable  to  ask  for  the  enforcement  of 
one  and  the  same  practice  in  the  two  different  parts."  (Article: 
"Separation  of  Education  and  Religion,"  in  the  Seoul  Press,  Novem- 
ber 25,  1915.) 

The  second  hope  lay  in  the  reassuring  personal  words  of 
prominent  Japanese;  but  in  reply  to  an  inquiry  which  re- 
ferred to  such  utterances,  Mr.  Komatsu  wrote,  May  5, 1916 : 
"All  official  affairs  are  to  be  dealt  with  according  to  written 
laws  concerned." 

The  third  hope  was  that  Bible  teaching  might  be  given 
and  chapel  services  held  in  the  school  either  before  or  after 
the  hours  devoted  to  the  curriculum  prescribed  by  the  gov- 
ernment regulations.  Visitors  and  missionaries  received 
encouraging  impressions  in  personal  interviews.  But  Sep- 
tember 17,  1915,  the  following  general  instruction  (Educa- 
tion Order  No.  1371)  was  sent  to  the  provincial  officials 
throughout  the  country: 

"It  is  not  permitted  to  add  the  teaching  of  religion  to  the  regular 
courses  of  study  taught  in  such  schools.  Nor  is  it  permitted  to  give 
instruction  in  religion  under  the  name  of  optional  studies  added  to  the 
regular  courses  of  study;  or  to  hold  religious  services  as  a  part  of  the 
school  work.  This  is  to  be  clearly  understood.  On  the  other  hand, 
there  will  be  no  objection  to  using  the  school  buildings  for  religious 
purposes,  provided  it  is  done  outside  of  the  school  work.  In  such 
cases,  however,  care  should  be  taken  not  to  confuse  this  with  the 
work  of  the  school,  and  also  not  to  constrain  scholars  to  accept  re- 


596          ^    THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

ligious  beliefs  against  their  will.  This  communication  is  sent  by 
order  of  the  authorities,  and  it  is  hoped  that  due  attention  will  be 
given  to  the  matter." 


This  was  supplemented  October  29,  1915,  by  an  "Instruc- 
tion from  the  Director  of  Home  Affairs  Department  to  the 
Chief  of  Police  Department,"  which  included  the  following 
sentence:  "If  those  hearing  the  (religious)  lectures  are  cer- 
tainly the  students  of  the  school,  I  judge  it  a  thing  to  be 
forbidden,  in  that  it  would  be  difficult  to  distinguish  this 
from  the  work  of  the  school." 

It  is  unjust  to  the  Japanese  to  charge  that  their  educa- 
tional regulations  were  framed  for  the  purpose  of  hamper- 
ing Christianity  as  such.  Mr.  Komatsu  truly  said  in  the 
Seoul  Press  of  November  25,  1915:  "I  regret  to  hear  that 
there  are  some  people  who  are  apt  to  consider  this  measure 
as  one  aimed  at  creating  a  restriction  on  religious  activity. 
Nothing  could  be  further  from  the  truth  than  such  pre- 
sumption. .  .  .  Freedom  of  religion  is  assured  to  each  and 
all."  And  Governor-General  Terauchi  is  reported  to  have 
said:  "There  is  perfect  freedom  of  religious  belief,  and  not 
only  tolerance  but  friendship  for  Christianity.  The  doing 
away  with  Bible  study  in  Korean  mission  schools  is  a  na- 
tional and  educational  measure  and  not  a  discrimination 
against  Christianity." 

This  is  undoubtedly  true;  but  it  needs  to  be  interpreted 
by  the  conviction  to  which  we  have  referred,  namely  that 
education  belongs  in  the  sphere  of  the  state  as  distinguished 
from  that  of  the  church,  so  that  religion  has  no  proper  place 
in  it.  The  church  is  first  defined  in  a  way  which  deprives 
it  of  an  important  part  of  its  functions,  and  then  it  is  told 
that  its  liberty  is  unimpaired  within  the  limits  of  the  defini- 
tion. Unfortunately,  this  does  not  help  in  solving  the 
present  problem,  for  while  the  missionaries  gladly  recog- 
nize their  freedom  in  evangelistic  work,  they  cannot  concur 
in  a  theory  of  religious  effort  which  excludes  education. 

In  excluding  religion  from  all  schools,  private  as  well  as 
public,  the  Japanese  were  under  the  impression  that  they 


NATIONALISM  AND  MISSION  SCHOOLS  597 

were  simply  following  the  example  of  the  most  enlightened 
Western  nations.  An  official  statement  in  the  Seoul  Press 
of  April  2,  1915,  included  the  following:  "With  the  excep- 
tion of  theological  schools  aiming  at  the  study  of  religion, 
no  school  in  the  United  States  gives  religious  teaching." 
American  readers  are  well  aware  that  this  is  a  misappre- 
hension. In  the  United  States  the  responsibility  of  the 
state  extends  only  to  the  provision  and  regulation  of  insti- 
tutions that  are  supported  in  whole  or  in  part  by  taxation. 
The  thousands  of  private  institutions  have  no  relation  to 
or  supervision  by  the  government.  The  schools  maintained 
by  the  state  exclude  religious  teaching,  although  some  of 
them  permit  the  reading  of  the  Bible  and  an  opening  prayer. 
Private  schools,  however,  are  entirely  free  to  teach  what 
they  please,  and  how  they  please,  religion  included,  and  the 
government  freely  grants  them  charters  of  incorporation. 

These  statements  are  substantially  true  of  British  edu- 
cational policy.  The  best  institutions  in  Great  Britain, 
including  Oxford,  Cambridge,  the  Scotch  universities,  and 
such  secondary  schools  as  Eton,  Rugby,  Harrow,  and  scores 
of  others,  though  some  of  them  are  called  "public  schools," 
are  not  government  schools  at  all  but  are  privately  con- 
trolled and  are  subject  to  no  government  regulations  what- 
ever, although  the  royal  family  and  the  highest  officers  of 
the  government  have  educated  their  sons  in  these  schools 
for  generations.  Many  of  their  teachers  are  ordained  clergy- 
men, and  nearly  all  of  the  others  are  communicant  members 
of  churches.  Religion  is  freely  taught  in  them,  and  many 
of  the  best  Bible  commentaries,  devotional  volumes,  and 
other  religious  publications  of  the  whole  Christian  world 
have  been  prepared  by  the  members  of  their  faculties. 

In  India,  the  Despatch  of  1854  based  the  educational 
system  for  that  great  dependency  on  two  principles:  (1)  re- 
liance on  private  schools  supervised  and  aided  by  the  gov- 
ernment, and  (2)  "an  entire  absence  from  interference  with 
the  religious  instruction  conveyed  in  the  schools  assisted." 
Unsuccessful  effort  has  been  made  for  several  years  to  in- 
duce the  Indian  Government  to  insert  a  "conscience  clause" 


598  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

which  would  exclude  compulsory  religious  exercises  from 
missionary  as  well  as  non-missionary  schools.  The  Na- 
tional Missionary  Council  of  India  adopted  the  following 
resolutions  in  1917: 

"That  this  Council  expresses  its  conviction  of  the  soundness  of  the 
principle  on  which  the  educational  policy  of  the  government  in  India 
is  based,  viz.,  of  giving  impartial  aid  to  all  institutions  which  con- 
tribute efficiently  to  general  education,  without  reference  to  the  re- 
ligious instruction  given,  and  deprecates  any  departure  from  that 
principle  in  the  widest  interest  of  the  public. 

"That  all  education  given  by  missions  or  missionaries  must  be  radi- 
cally Christian,  .  .  .  and  including  instruction  in  the  Bible  as  the 
greatest  of  books  for  the  teaching  of  truth  and  the  building  of  character. 

"That  Christian  educational  institutions  exist  to  provide  such  edu- 
cation for  all  who  are  willing  to  receive  it,  and  claim  a  definite  sphere 
in  which  to  exercise  this  function,  and  it  is  unreasonable  to  require 
Christian  missionaries  to  participate  in  giving  any  education  which 
is  not  fundamentally  Christian. 

"That  wherever  there  is  a  sufficient  demand  for  other  than  Christian 
education,  the  Council  holds  it  is  the  duty  of  private  or  public  bodies 
to  provide  it." 

The  justice  of  this  position  has  been  generally  recognized. 
Turkey  and  Mexico  prohibit  religious  teaching  in  church 
schools;  but  no  friend  of  Japan  wishes  to  see  her  in  their 
class.  Moreover,  the  governments  of  those  countries  have 
reasons,  such  as  they  are,  which  do  not  exist  in  Korea. 

Japanese  officials  urged  that  if  the  Government-General 
of  Korea  should  permit  Christianity  to  be  taught  in  the 
private  schools  that  the  mission  boards  maintain,  it  must 
also  permit  Buddhism  to  be  taught  in  any  schools  that 
Buddhists  may  desire  to  maintain.  Missionaries  have  not 
the  slightest  objection  to  this.  They  ask  no  special  favors 
whatever,  but  only  religious  liberty.  Since  the  Imperial 
Government  of  Japan  has  recognized  both  Christianity  and 
Buddhism  as  religions  of  the  Empire,  we  are  at  a  loss  to 
understand  why  the  adherents  of  either  faith  should  not  be 
permitted  educational  freedom  as  well  as  political  freedom. 
History  and  the  experience  of  other  countries  conclusively 
prove  that  the  true  interests  of  the  state  are  injured  rather 


NATIONALISM  AND  MISSION  SCHOOLS  599 

than  benefited  by  any  restriction  of  the  freedom  of  educa- 
tion and  religion.  Mission  schools  seek  to  train  a  child  to 
a  high  type  of  Christian  character  and  manhood;  and  such 
character  and  manhood  form  the  securest  possible  founda- 
tion for  the  state  as  well  as  for  the  church.  If,  as  Prince 
Ito  declared,  "civilization  depends  upon  morality,  and  the 
highest  morality  upon  religion,"  then  religion  has  a  proper 
place  in  education;  and  if  the  state  cannot  put  it  into  the 
government  schools,  there  is  all  the  more  reason  for  allow- 
ing private  schools  to  do  so.  President  Woodrow  Wilson 
knows  both  education  and  government  as  well  as  any  living 
man,  and  he  has  said  that  "the  argument  for  efficiency  in 
education  can  have  no  permanent  validity  if  the  efficiency 
sought  be  not  moral  as  well  as  intellectual.  The  ages  of 
strong  and  definite  moral  impulse  have  been  the  ages  of 
achievement;  and  the  moral  impulses  which  have  lifted 
highest  have  come  from  Christian  peoples." 

The  question  has  been  asked  whether  the  missionaries 
mean  that  a  Christian  should  not  teach  in  a  public  school 
in  America  because  religious  instruction  is  forbidden.  The 
question  is  not  to  the  point.  We  are  not  considering  public 
schools  maintained  by  taxation  for  children  of  all  religious 
preferences  or  none  at  all.  We  are  dealing  in  Korea  with 
private  schools  maintained  by  Christian  people,  with  no 
help  from  the  state,  for  such  pupils  as  may  be  sent  to  them 
by  parents  who  desire  Christian  instruction  for  them.  The 
Japanese  Government  is  developing  a  public  school  system 
in  Korea  which  will  give  a  good  secular  education,  and  we 
do  not  ask  that  it  include  religion,  nor  do  we  object  to  any 
Korean  boys  and  girls  attending  the  government  schools. 
The  only  reason  why  the  mission  boards  should  conduct 
schools  lies  in  the  desire  to  train  boys  and  girls  under  such 
strong  Christian  influence  that  they  will  become  men  and 
women  not  only  of  good  education  but  of  high  character 
and  personal  worth,  so  that  the  church  may  obtain  from 
their  ranks  its  ministers,  evangelists,  teachers,  and  laymen 
to  sustain  and  lead  its  large  and  beneficent  religious,  phil- 
anthropic, and  uplifting  efforts. 


600  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

It  should  be  borne  in  mind,  as  an  important  factor  in  the 
problem,  that  no  schools  in  Korea  are  neutral  toward  re- 
ligion, whatever  the  legal  theory  may  be.  In  countries  like 
America  and  Great  Britain,  where  the  Christian  sentiment 
in  communities  is  strong  and  there  are  ample  educational 
facilities  under  Christian  auspices  for  those  who  prefer 
them,  the  religious  neutrality  of  public  schools  is  more 
easily  preserved;  but  in  a  country  like  Korea  neutrality  is 
impossible.  Every  institution  there  is  either  definitely 
Christian  or  definitely  non-Christian  or  anti-Christian  in 
influence.  The  Government-General  of  Korea  itself  effec- 
tively proves  this.  While  it  prohibits  Christian  religious 
exercises  as  a  part  of  the  curriculum  and  procedure  of 
schools,  it  puts  other  religious  teaching  into  its  text-books 
and  required  ceremonies.  A  text-book  on  ethics,  issued  by 
the  government  for  use  in  all  schools,  includes  among  its 
illustrations  three  Koreans  prostrating  themselves  before 
the  grave  of  their  ancestors,  on  which  there  are  sacrificial 
offerings.  The  accompanying  text  reads: 

"LESSON  17 — ANCESTORS 

"These  persons  have  swept  the  grave  clean,  and  prepared  and  set 
out  in  order  the  various  kinds  of  sacrifices. 

"It  will  not  do  at  all  for  anyone  to  neglect  the  sacrifices  to  his 
ancestors." 

Mission  as  well  as  public  schools  are  required  to  use  this 
book  and  no  substitute  is  permitted.  The  Japanese  au- 
thorities do  not  appear  to  see  the  inconsistency  between 
forbidding  the  teaching  of  the  Christian  religion  in  a  school 
and  commanding  the  teaching  of  ancestor-worship.  They 
claim  that  the  latter  is  "not  religion  but  merely  a  good  so- 
cial custom  teaching  respect  for  parents."  But  the  "sac- 
rifices" are  distinctly  religious,  and  the  people  universally 
regard  them  as  such. 

A  related  difficulty  grows  out  of  the  observance  of  na- 
tional holidays.  The  mission  schools  gladly  celebrate  those 
which  commemorate  events  of  historical  importance,  like 
the  anniversary  of  the  founding  of  the  Empire,  which  corre- 


NATIONALISM  AND  MISSION  SCHOOLS          601 

spends  in  general  to  the  American  Fourth  of  July.  But 
in  Korea,  most  of  these  holidays  are  simply  the  days  on 
which  the  Emperor  offers  the  Imperial  Sacrifices,  and  their 
significance  is  understood  to  be  religious.  Since  April  1, 
1915,  when  the  new  school  laws  went  into  effect,  the  mis- 
sion schools  have  been  ordered  to  hold  "ceremonies"  on 
these  days,  and  the  missionaries  do  not  find  it  easy  to  devise 
an  observance  of  a  "sacrificial  day"  that  is  satisfactory  to 
the  watchful  officials. 

A  special  complication  develops  when  ceremonial  days 
fall  on  Sunday.  For  example,  in  connection  with  the  anni- 
versary of  the  death  of  the  Empress  Dowager,  a  mission 
school  received  an  order  to  assemble  its  teachers  and  pupils 
at  the  hour  of  Sunday  morning  service  and  hold  a  "wor- 
shipping-at-a-distance  ceremony."  The  word  used  for 
worship  was  the  word  used  where  the  one  worshipped  is 
regarded  as  divine;  and  the  missionaries  were  directed  to 
report  afterward  exactly  what  they  had  done.  They  de- 
cided that  they  could  not  comply  with  this  order;  but  they 
held  a  memorial  service  at  three  o'clock  the  preceding  after- 
noon, and  on  Monday  so  reported.  They  expected  trouble, 
but  none  resulted,  although  the  officials  were  plainly  dis- 
pleased. 

Ceremonial  worship  in  schools  before  the  picture  of  the 
Emperor  on  his  birthday,  and  daily  bowing  before  it  by 
teachers  in  schools  recognized  by  the  government,  are  other 
observances  that  are  not  so  simple  as  they  sound,  since 
they  are  interpreted  to  be  not  merely  tokens  of  respect  to 
the  sovereign  but  acts  of  worship  to  a  divine  person.  De- 
mocracy and  Christianity  do  not  relish  such  ceremonies. 
Some  Japanese  assert  that  they  are  really  nothing  more 
than  the  salute  to  the  flag  in  American  schools  in  the  United 
States.  If  this  were  all,  it  would  be  captious  to  object. 
Unfortunately,  not  only  missionaries  but  Korean  Christians 
generally  as  well  as  many  Japanese  regard  them  as  a  rever- 
ential recognition  of  the  divinity  of  the  Emperor  and  a 
religious  function.  This  was  illustrated  by  the  following 
incident,  which  I  give  in  the  exact  form  in  which  it  was 


602  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  PAR  EAST 

reported  by  a  British  missionary:  "The  celebration  of  the 
Emperor's  birthday  fell  upon  a  Sunday,  and  our  school  re- 
ceived orders  to  assemble  on  the  day  and  to  sing  the  na- 
tional anthem  and  listen  to  a  speech  by  the  principal  of  the 
school.  It  has  been  customary  in  the  past  to  hold  such 
ceremonies,  if  they  fell  on  Sunday,  in  a  Christian  manner, 
opening  with  prayer  and  a  Bible  reading,  and  perhaps  sing- 
ing a  hymn.  This  time  we  received  very  definite  instruc- 
tions. There  must  be  no  religious  ceremony  of  any  kind; 
the  church  work  must  be  conducted  quite  distinct  from 
the  school  work;  the  celebration  must  be  held  strictly  in 
accordance  with  the  programme  submitted,  and  the  school 
must  assemble  as  a  school  and  do  reverence  to  the  name  of 
the  Emperor.  I  interviewed  the  Prefect  and  asked  him  if 
we  could  not  meet  on  Saturday,  or,  if  that  were  not  possible, 
to  hold  the  meeting  on  Sunday  but  to  include  some  recog- 
nition in  the  meeting  of  our  Christian  position.  He  refused 
the  request  and  said  that  we  must  carry  out  the  request  of 
the  authorities.  I  replied  that  it  was  not  a  question  of 
custom  but  of  conscience,  and  that  as  a  Christian  I  would 
have  to  refuse  to  conduct  such  a  meeting  on  a  Sunday,  a 
day  set  apart  for  the  worship  of  God.  His  reply  was  re- 
markable: 'We  put  the  Emperor  first  and  all  Gods  second, 
and  you  must  hold  the  celebration  even  though  it  is  on 
Sunday.'  This,  of  course,  settled  the  matter,  and  I  had 
no  more  to  say;  but  I  wrote  to  him  next  day  and  again 
explained  my  position.  In  direct  antagonism  to  his  orders, 
we  held  our  celebration  on  the  Saturday.  No  doubt  the 
school  again  is  marked  down  as  wanting  in  loyalty  and 
patriotism." 

Some  of  the  missionaries  and  their  boards  in  America, 
while  of  course  preferring  to  have  the  Bible  in  the  cur- 
riculum and  to  have  chapel  services  compulsory,  did  not 
deem  it  wise  to  force  the  issue  on  these  points  alone.  If  a 
definite  part  of  the  day  were  set  apart  for  the  curriculum 
prescribed  by  the  government,  they  were  willing  to  have 
their  Bible  teaching  and  chapel  service  either  before  or  after 
the  hours  devoted  to  it,  provided  there  were  freedom  for 


NATIONALISM  AND  MISSION  SCHOOLS  603 

religious  instruction  and  services  on  the  school  premises 
and  as  a  recognized  part  of  the  school  life. 

Mr.  Komatsu's  statement  in  the  Seoul  Press  of  November 
25,  1915,  was  held  to  justify  this,  for  he  said:  "It  is  per- 
fectly free  for  students  of  all  schools,  whether  governmental 
or  private,  to  study  the  Bible  outside  of  the  school  and  fixed 
school-hours  under  private  teachers,  or  at  special  institutes 
such  as  Sunday  schools,  seminaries  or  churches."  Bishop 
Merriman  C.  Harris,  then  resident  bishop  of  the  Methodist 
Episcopal  Church,  decided  that  it  would  be  wise  to  show 
good-will  by  conforming  to  the  regulations  on  this  basis,  even 
in  the  case  of  schools  that  were  entitled  to  the  ten-year  pe- 
riod of  grace.  Accordingly,  he  applied  for  a  permit  for  the 
Methodist  Pai  Chai  Academy  for  Boys  in  Seoul.  The  Jap- 
anese promptly  issued  it,  and  the  event  was  made  the  oc- 
casion of  a  celebration  at  which  mutual  felicitations  were  ex- 
changed. The  favor  of  the  government  caused  a  flood  of 
applications  for  enrollment.  Bishop  Harris  was  convinced 
that  he  took  the  best  course  in  view  of  all  the  circum- 
stances, and  a  number  of  missionaries  supported  him  in 
this  position.  Others  strongly  dissented,  declaring  that  they 
were  unable  to  see  how  a  law  which  explicitly  commands 
the  separation  of  education  and  religion  in  mission  schools 
is  compatible  with  that  union  of  education  and  religion 
which  mission  schools  are  primarily  maintained  to  secure. 

At  this  writing,  the  ten-year  period  of  grace,  given  to 
mission  schools  that  were  in  authorized  operation  when  the 
law  went  into  effect,  has  not  expired,  and  many  of  the 
schools  are  continuing  their  religious  teaching  under  its 
sanction;  although  several  have  deemed  it  wiser  to  follow 
the  example  of  the  Pai  Chai  Academy.  Meantime,  large 
significance  has  been  attached  to  the  charter  which  the 
Government-General  issued  April  7,  1917,  to  the  newly 
organized  Chosen  Christian  College  in  Seoul,  represent- 
ing a  union  of  mission  boards.  Article  II  of  this  charter, 
styled  the  "Hojin,"  stated  that  the  "object  of  this  Hojin 
shall  be  to  establish  and  maintain  this  College  in  accordance 
with  Christian  principles";  Article  IV  that  "the  managers, 


604  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

officers,  members  of  the  faculty  and  all  the  instructors 
must  be  believers  in  and  followers  of  the  doctrines  contained 
in  the  Christian  Bible";  Articles  VI  and  VII  that  two- 
thirds  of  the  members  of  the  Hojin  are  to  be  chosen  by  the 
missions  of  the  co-operating  boards,  and  the  remaining 
one-third  of  such  "Christian  Japanese  subjects  as  these 
missionaries  shall  elect";  and  Articles  XVIII  and  XIX 
provide  for  the  possible  dissolution  of  the  Hojin  and  the  re- 
version of  the  property  to  the  original  donors  or  their  suc- 
cessors, so  that  the  co-operating  boards,  after  due  notice, 
can  withdraw  their  missionaries  and  their  financial  support 
if  at  any  time  they  should  become  convinced  that  the  col- 
lege is  not  sufficiently  Christian  in  character  and  influence 
to  justify  support  as  a  part  of  the  missionary  work  in  Korea. 
The  Honorable  K.  Usami,  Director  of  Home  Affairs  of  the 
Government-General,  in  connection  with  a  letter  dated 
September  22  to  Doctor  0.  R.  Avison,  president  of  the 
college,  said:  "There  will  be  no  restriction  for  students  as 
to  the  free  study  of  religion  if  they  do  it  quite  apart  from 
the  regular  curriculum." 

While  the  Hojin  does  not  afford  all  the  liberty  that  mis- 
sion schools  have  long  enjoyed  in  Korea,  as  well  as  in  other 
fields,  it  was  viewed  as  proof  of  the  readiness  of  the  officials 
to  recognize  the  Christian  character  and  purpose  of  an  edu- 
cational institution  conducted  by  mission  boards  as  an 
integral  part  of  their  Christian  effort,  and  to  give  it  as  large 
a  measure  of  religious  freedom  as  they  could  under  the  law. 
The  fact  that  the  college  was  to  be  located  in  Seoul,  that  it 
planned  to  do  the  kind  of  educational  work  that  the  Gov- 
ernment-General desired  to  have  done,  that  Japanese  were  to 
be  represented  on  the  faculty  and  Field  Board  of  Managers, 
and  that  the  missionaries  in  charge  were  men  whom  the 
government  officials  best  knew  and  most  trusted,  doubtless 
smoothed  the  way  for  this  institution.  Substantially  the 
same  arrangement  was  made  in  the  Hojin  of  the  Severance 
Union  Medical  College  in  Seoul.  Japanese  of  high  rank, 
including  Mr.  Sekiya,  Director  of  the  Bureau  of  Education, 
joined  in  what  the  Seoul  Press  described  as  a  "congratula- 


NATIONALISM  AND  MISSION  SCHOOLS  605 

tory  meeting"  June  15,  at  which  hearty  good  wishes  for 
both  colleges  were  freely  expressed.  A  considerable  num- 
ber of  missionaries,  although  not  a  majority,  and  all  of  the 
five  boards  in  North  America  voted  to  accept  the  Hojin, 
not  because  it  conceded  all  they  wanted,  but  because  they 
felt  that  it  was  offered  in  a  friendly  spirit  as  the  most  prac- 
ticable present  adjustment  of  an  admittedly  difficult  prob- 
lem, and  an  advance  step  which  would  make  other  advances 
easier  at  a  later  time. 

Here  the  matter  stands  as  these  pages  go  to  press.  What 
will  happen  at  the  expiration  of  the  ten-year  period  of  grace 
in  1925  remains  to  be  seen.  Meantime,  the  Chosen  Chris- 
tian College  and  the  other  conforming  institutions  are  pros- 
pering greatly,  while  the  other  mission  schools  are  having 
far  from  easy  going.  An  illustration  of  their  predicament 
appeared  in  connection  with  the  graduating  exercises  of  the 
Pyongyang  Junior  College  last  year.  Four  students  made 
addresses.  The  foreigners  present  deemed  them  void  of 
offense,  but  the  police  declared  that  all  the  speakers  had 
said  things  subversive  of  the  public  good.  The  students 
were  arrested,  interrogated,  and  then  released,  as  their  pre- 
vious records  had  been  good.  The  provincial  chief  of  the 
gendarmes,  however,  summoned  the  students  before  him 
and  again  investigated  the  case.  The  president  of  the  col- 
lege was  called  to  the  office  and  strictly  charged  to  exercise 
greater  care  in  the  future.  The  matter  was  then  reported 
to  the  Governor  of  the  Province,  and  then  to  the  Governor- 
General.  The  latter  wrote  to  the  president  of  the  college 
that  the  indiscretion  of  the  students  was  so  serious  that 
the  government  was  contemplating  closing  the  school.  A 
similar  communication  was  sent  by  the  Governor-General 
to  the  provincial  Governor,  who  thereupon  called  the 
president  to  his  office  and  said  that  unless  he  was  prepared 
to  make  certain  changes  the  college  would  have  to  close. 
These  changes  were  enumerated  as  follows:  (1)  Appointment 
of  a  Japanese  head  master;  (2)  dismissal  of  three  of  the 
boys  who  had  spoken,  relief  of  the  fourth  from  certain  as- 
signments of  teaching  which  he  was  doing  in  the  academy, 


606  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

and  promise  not  to  repeat  the  oratorical  programme  in  the 
future;  (3)  secure  more  Japanese  teachers,  especially  those 
who  could  understand  Korean;  (4)  do  all  teaching,  except 
the  Chinese  classics,  Korean  language,  and  English,  through 
the  medium  of  the  Japanese  language;  (5)  prepare  syllabi  of 
the  subjects  of  instruction  so  as  to  limit  it  to  specified  points, 
teachers  not  to  deviate  from  them  or  to  speak  on  forbidden 
subjects;  (6)  conform  under  the  new  regulations.  When  the 
president  replied  that  he  would  do  all  that  he  could  to 
make  the  first  five  changes  desired,  but  that  as  to  the  sixth 
change,  the  mission  preferred  to  continue  for  the  present 
under  the  old  permit  which  entitled  the  college  to  the  ten- 
year  period  of  grace,  the  official  was  plainly  disappointed 
and  he  intimated  that  number  six  was  the  most  important 
of  all. 

I  think  that  we  should  consider  the  whole  subject  from 
the  view-point  of  real  friendship  for  the  Japanese,  of  respect 
for  their  general  policy  in  Korea,  and  of  frank  recognition 
of  their  point  of  view.  We  are  not  challenging  their  proper 
authority  when  we  seek  that  reasonable  religious  freedom 
in  mission  schools  which  all  civilized  nations  afford  and 
which  has  been  hitherto  enjoyed  in  Korea.  That  the 
attitude  of  the  missionaries  was  not  influenced  by  prejudice 
is  shown  by  the  fact  that  the  protest  of  the  Council  of 
Federated  Missions,  already  quoted,  was  accompanied  by 
the  declaration  that  we  "record  our  thankfulness  to  God 
for  the  freedom  of  conscience  and  the  religious  liberty  we 
enjoy  under  the  Imperial  Government  of  Japan,  and  that 
as  residents  of  the  Empire  of  Japan  and  as  Christian  mis- 
sionaries we  recognize  the  constituted  civil  authorities  as 
ordained  by  God  and  to  be  duly  honored  and  obeyed  in 
accordance  with  the  Word  of  God." 

We  should  also  bear  in  mind  the  fundamental  considera- 
tion already  referred  to,  namely,  that  what  the  Japanese 
object  to  in  Korea  is  not  Christianity  but  the  influence  over 
their  subjects  and  over  hundreds  of  schools  of  a  large  body 
of  Americans  who  are  aliens  in  race  and  in  social  and  politi- 
cal ideas,  and  who  are  regarded  by  many  Japanese  as  an 


607 

obstacle  to  their  national  policy.  The  position  so  axiomatic 
to  the  mission  boards — that  religion  is  an  essential  part  of 
the  missionary  programme — has  become  somewhat  over- 
shadowed in  the  minds  of  the  Japanese  authorities  by  the 
political  question  of  the  general  relationship  of  a  body  of 
foreigners  to  the  governmental  supremacy  of  the  Japanese. 
I  am  inclined  to  think  that  the  Government-General  is  more 
deeply  interested  in  the  recognition  of  its  rightful  authority 
in  Korea  than  it  is  in  the  question  of  religion  in  schools, 
that  it  cares  comparatively  little  whether  the  Bible  is  in 
or  out  of  the  curriculum  of  a  private  school,  but  that  it  cares 
a  great  deal  whether  the  atmosphere  of  a  school  begets  re- 
spect and  loyalty  for  the  government.  Governor-General 
Terauchi  is  understood  to  have  said  that  he  could  not  afford 
to  have  little  American  citizens  made  out  of  Korean  boys 
and  girls.  This  suspicion  lies  at  the  bottom  of  present 
problems,  and  it  must  be  dispelled  before  they  can  be  solved. 
A  happy  adjustment  may  be  practicable  on  the  basis  of 
complete  mutual  confidence  that  would  be  impossible  with- 
out it.  Fortunately,  this  does  not  involve  a  change  in 
missionary  policy,  as  the  missionaries  do  not  want  to  make 
Korean  boys  and  girls  into  "little  American  citizens." 

The  general  educational  regulations  of  the  Japanese 
Governor-General  are  being  scrupulously  obeyed  to  the 
utmost  limit  of  financial  ability.  The  government  has  an 
unquestioned  right  to  demand  a  reasonable  standard  in  the 
schools  which  educate  its  subjects,  and  to  object  to  any 
text-books  or  observances  that  are  not  compatible  with  the 
effort  to  develop  that  loyalty  to  Japan  which  is  essential 
to  its  policy  of  unification.  Observance  of  the  American 
Fourth  of  July  is  out  of  place  in  Korea,  and  it  is  not  the  busi- 
ness of  missionaries  to  teach  the  history  of  the  Declaration 
of  Independence  and  the  American  Revolution  in  such  a 
way  as  to  permit  Korean  youths  to  get  the  impression  that 
they  should  emulate  American  example.  As  for  equip- 
ment and  grade  of  work,  if  the  mission  boards  cannot  main- 
tain schools  with  sanitary  buildings  and  qualified  teachers, 
they  have  no  right  to  complain  if  the  government  objects. 


608  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

We  should  thoroughly  respect  and  sympathize  with  the  de- 
sire of  the  government  to  systematize,  co-ordinate,  and 
improve  the  educational  institutions  of  the  country.  The 
mission  boards  have  long  realized  that  they  needed  improve- 
ment, and  they  cordially  desire  to  co-operate  with  the  Bu- 
reau of  Education  in  its  laudable  efforts  to  this  end. 

The  ordinance  regarding  the  separation  of  education 
from  religion  stands  in  a  different  category  inasmuch. as 
it  affects  the  vital  character  of  mission  schools  and  the 
essential  purpose  for  which  they  are  maintained,  and  as  it 
also  affects  the  other  important  principles  which  have  been 
discussed  in  this  chapter.  We  are  loyal  to  the  American 
Government  in  the  Philippine  Islands;  but  if  the  American 
Governor  there  were  to  forbid  religious  teaching  in  privately 
maintained  mission  schools,  they  would  yield  only  to  for- 
cible closing  by  police;  and  their  supporters  would  not  ad- 
mit that  the  government's  general  benevolence  of  intention 
could  be  properly  pleaded  in  justification  of  its  course. 
It  should  be  distinctly  understood,  therefore,  that  any 
protest  in  Korea  is  not  caused  in  the  slightest  degree  by 
anti-Japanese  sentiment,  but  that  it  is  only  what  Ameri- 
cans would  unhesitatingly  make  if  their  own  government 
in  the  Philippines  were  to  adopt  a  similar  measure. 

It  has  been  said  that  if  we  expect  to  have  the  regula- 
tions modified,  we  should  keep  still,  as  protest  will  simply 
harden  the  government  in  its  position  and  make  it  feel  that 
it  cannot  change  without  sacrifice  of  its  dignity — losing 
"face."  This  has  not  been  our  experience  in  dealings  with 
the  Japanese.  They  are  courageously  loyal  to  their  own 
convictions,  and  they  respect  courage  and  loyalty  in  others. 
They  are,  withal,  sensible  men  who  have  more  than  once 
showed  themselves  open  to  candid  approach.  I  have 
described  elsewhere  the  courteous  consideration  that  was 
given  to  the  respectful  remonstrances  that  were  made  by 
the  missionaries  and  their  supporters  in  America  and  Great 
Britain  in  connection  with  the  order  of  the  Minister  of  State 
for  Education  in  Japan  in  1899  and  the  Korean  Conspiracy 
Case,  in  1912-13.  In  the  case  of  the  Doshisha  College  in 


NATIONALISM  AND  MISSION  SCHOOLS  609 

Kyoto,  then  under  the  care  of  the  American  Board  of  Com- 
missioners for  Foreign  Missions,  the  discussion  was  long 
and  animated,  but  it  ended  satisfactorily. 

It  is  extraordinary  that  any  one  should  feel  that  no  pro- 
test should  be  made  against  an  official  act  on  the  ground 
that  protest  would  make  the  officials  more  determined  to 
persist  in  it.  What  would  be  the  condition  of  the  world  if 
such  a  course  were  to  be  everywhere  followed  ?  Is  it  reason- 
able to  expect  that  any  government,  having  promulgated 
a  law,  would  abstain  from  enforcing  it  because  nobody  pro- 
tested? If  no  protest  is  made  against  a  given  ordinance, 
why  should  not  a  government  carry  it  into  effect?  Those 
who  warn  missionaries  to  yield  without  effort  in  this  matter 
can  hardly  be  conscious  of  the  severe  criticism  of  the  Gov- 
ernment-General which  they  are  really  making,  for  their 
warning  can  only  mean  that  they  deem  responsible  Japanese 
officials  to  be  so  stubborn  and  reactionary  that  they  will 
not  listen  to  the  opinions  of  their  fellow  men.  Being  myself 
a  friend  of  the  Japanese,  I  do  them  the  justice  to  believe 
that  they  are  rational  and  fair-minded  men,  and  amenable 
to  reasonable  suggestion.  I  therefore  have  no  hesitation 
whatever  in  approaching  them  with  the  same  frankness  with 
which  I  would  approach  our  own  government  in  Washing- 
ton, or  broad-minded  men  anywhere,  and  I  invariably  find 
that  my  confidence  is  not  misplaced. 

I  renew  the  expression  of  my  belief  that  what  the  govern- 
ment chiefly  desires  is  fair  recognition  of  its  rightful  juris- 
diction in  Korea,  its  national  policy  of  assimilation  with 
Japan,  and  its  just  purpose  to  see  that  Korean  youths  are 
well  educated  and  that  they  are  trained  in  loyalty  of  feel- 
ing to  the  constituted  authorities.  As  for  the  mission  boards, 
all  they  ask  is  that  liberty  that  they  have  hitherto  had,  to 
teach  Christ  and  the  Bible  in  the  private  schools  that  they 
and  the  Korean  Christians  maintain.  It  should  seem  as  if 
on  this  basis  some  amicable  adjustment  ought  to  be  possible 
that  would  conserve  the  objects  that  each  party  deems 
essential.  The  boards  and  missions  have  no  selfish  interest 
in  maintaining  schools  in  Korea.  They  are  expending 


610  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

much  labor  and  money  for  the  sole  purpose  of  doing  good 
to  the  people  and  with  no  thought  of  advantage  to  them- 
selves. It  is  their  earnest  desire  to  co-operate  with  the 
Government-General  in  every  possible  way  and  with  no 
reservation  whatever  except  freedom  to  keep  God  in  the 
forefront  of  all  their  institutions  and  activities.  If  they 
fail  to  do  this,  they  fail  in  the  chief  reason  for  their  exist- 
ence and  should  withdraw  from  Korea  altogether. 


CHAPTER  XXXVI 


A  SEPARATE  volume,  and  a  bulky  one  at  that,  would  be 
required  to  tell  in  any  adequate  way  the  story  of  Christian 
missions  in  Japan.  Indeed,  Otis  Gary  devoted  two  closely 
printed  volumes  to  his  admirable  History  of  Christianity  in 
Japan,  and  the  separate  books  that  have  been  published 
by  other  writers  upon  particular  phases  of  the  work  and  the 
lives  of  notable  missionaries  would  fill  a  fair-sized  library. 
It  is  a  stirring  record,  abounding  in  incident,  full  of  human 
interest,  and  far-reaching  in  reconstructive  influence. 

To  the  Roman  Catholics  belongs  the  credit  of  making  the 
first  effort  to  carry  the  Gospel  to  Japan,  and  it  was  a  Jesuit 
who  bore  it.  One  of  the  five  devoted  souls  whom  Ignatius 
Loyola  associated  with  himself  in  founding  the  Society  of 
Jesus  in  the  dark  and  stormy  years  of  the  sixteenth  century 
was  the  immortal  Francis  Xavier.  A  gifted  youth,  educated 
at  the  University  of  Paris,  he  with  the  others  turned  away 
from  the  allurements  of  secular  life  and  took  the  rigid  vows 
of  chastity,  poverty,  obedience,  and  readiness  to  go  wherever 
in  the  world  they  might  be  sent.  When  the  King  of  Por- 
tugal asked  the  Jesuits  to  send  missionaries  to  his  newly 
won  possessions  in  India,  Loyola  ordered  Xavier  to  respond. 
He  started  for  Lisbon  on  a  day's  notice,  and  reached  Goa, 
May  6,  1542.  His  seven  years  in  India  were  characterized 
by  indefatigable  labors,  and  by  such  apparent  success  that 
he  wrote:  "The  multitude  of  those  who  become  converts 
to  the  faith  of  Jesus  Christ  is  so  great  that  my  arms  often 
grow  weary  with  baptizing  and  I  am  unable  to  speak  any 
longer;  ...  I  have  baptized  a  whole  village  in  a  day." 
But  the  kind  of  Christians  that  were  made  in  this  whole- 
sale fashion  is  indicated  in  his  dejected  report  to  Loyola 

611 


612  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

in  1549:  "The  experience  that  I  have  of  these  countries 
shows  me  clearly  that  there  is  no  possible  hope  of  perpetu- 
ating the  Society  here  by  means  of  the  native  Indians. 
Christianity  itself  will  survive  only  so  long  as  we  remain 
and  live  here — we  who  have  already  come  or  those  whom 
you  shall  send-" 

In  this  despairing  mood  he  met,  during  a  visit  to  Malacca, 
a  wandering  Japanese  whose  name  he  gave  as  Anjiro,  but 
whom  later  writers  have  called  Yajiro,  who,  after  killing  a 
man  in  Japan,  had  fled  in  a  Portuguese  ship  to  Malacca, 
where  he  was  baptized.  From  him  Xavier  learned  much  of 
Japan.  "If  I  went  to  Japan,  would  the  people  become 
Christians?"  he  asked.  And  Anjiro  replied:  "My  people 
would  not  immediately  become  Christians;  but  they  would 
first  ask  you  a  multitude  of  questions,  weighing  carefully 
your  answers  and  your  claims.  Above  all,  they  would 
observe  whether  your  conduct  agreed  with  your  words. 
If  you  should  satisfy  them  on  these  points  by  suitable  re- 
plies to  their  inquiries  and  by  a  life  above  reproach — then, 
as  soon  as  the  matter  was  known  and  fully  examined,  the 
King  (Daimyo),  the  nobles,  and  the  educated  people  would 
become  Christians.  Six  months  would  suffice;  for  the  nation 
is  one  that  always  follows  the  guidance  of  reason." 

Flaming  with  zeal  stimulated  by  this  opinion,  Xavier 
quickly  sailed  for  Japan  accompanied  by  two  other  Jesuits, 
Father  Cosmo  Torres  and  Brother  Juan  Fernandez,  and  by 
three  Japanese,  including  Anjiro.  After  a  voyage  so  stormy 
that  the  little  sailing  vessel  was  more  than  once  in  imminent 
danger  of  foundering,  they  arrived  at  Kagoshima  in  the 
province  of  Satsuma,  August  15,  1549.  It  was  a  memora- 
ble day  in  the  history  of  Japan  and  of  Christianity  when 
these  heroic  men  landed,  the  first  messengers  of  the  gospel 
of  Christ  to  a  people  who  were  destined  to  become  one  of 
the  great  nations  of  the  earth.  After  twenty-seven  months 
of  incessant  labor,  Xavier  sailed  November  20,  1551,  for 
India.  After  selecting  more  missionaries  for  Japan  he  de- 
parted for  China,  but  died  on  the  way  at  Chang-chuang  on 
an  island  near  Macao,  November  27,  1552.  Fernandez 


ROMAN  CATHOLIC  AND  RUSSIAN  MISSIONS      613 

and  Torres  remained  in  Japan  till  their  deaths  in  1567  and 

1570  respectively. 

The  mission  work  thus  begun  was  steadily  pressed  and  the 
little  band  of  pioneers  was  gradually  enlarged  by  later  ar- 
rivals. The  Japanese  appear  to  have  welcomed  the  mis- 
sionaries with  surprising  cordiality.  Xavier  had  written: 
"We  have  been  received  by  the  Governor  (Capitan)  of  the 
city  and  by  the  Commandant  (Alcayde)  with  much  kind- 
ness and  friendship,  as  we  have  also  been  by  all  the  people." 

The  novelty  of  the  strangers'  appearance  attracted  crowds. 
Converts  were  soon  enrolled.  The  experiences  of  the  mis- 
sionaries were  varied,  and  for  a  score  of  years  fair  progress 
was  made,  although  discouragements  and  occasional  perils 
were  not  wanting.  The  decade  beginning  with  the  year 

1571  was  one  of  more  rapid  growth.    Converts  became 
numerous.    The  Jesuits  made  special  effort  to  reach  the 
higher  classes  and  with  no  small  degree  of  success.    Among 
the  Christians  were  such  dignitaries  as  Takayama  Yusho 
and  his  son  and  successor,  Takayama  Ukon,  the  feudal  lords 
of  Takatsuki,  Konishi  Yukinaga  and  Kuroda  Yoshitaka, 
celebrated  generals  in  the  army,  and  a  number  of  civil 
officials   of   rank   and   influence.     But   in    the   reign    of 
Toyotomi  Hideyoshi  in  the  later  years  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  the  tide  turned.    Various  reasons  for  this  change 
of  attitude  have  been  assigned.     Defenders  of  the  mis- 
sionaries dwell  upon  the  resentment  aroused  by  dissolute 
European  traders,  the  wrath  of  Hideyoshi  because  Christian 
Japanese  girls  refused  to  pander  to  his  licentious  desires, 
and  the  growing  suspicion  that  the  priests  represented  the 
political  ambitions  of  their  governments;    a  suspicion  to 
which  their  course  lent  some  color,  for  they  were  active  in 
court  circles.    It  must  be  added  that  the  zeal  of  the  mis- 
sionaries was  not  always  tempered  by  tactful  consideration 
for  the  customs  and  sacred  institutions  of  the  people.    They 
were  relentless  in  their  attacks  upon  Buddhist  priests  and 
worship,  while  their  wholesale  methods  of  baptism  on  merely 
superficial  acquiescence  in  Christian  formulas  brought  into 
the  church  multitudes  of  Japanese  whose  standards  of  con- 


614  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

duct  were  little,  and  in  many  instances  not  at  all,  better 
than  those  of  the  non-Christians  about  them.  The  Japa- 
nese Department  of  Education,  in  a  History  of  the  Empire  of 
Japan  issued  in  1893,  assigned  the  following  reason  for  the 
reversal  of  popular  attitude  toward  Christianity:  "When 
Hideyoshi  in  the  course  of  his  campaign  against  Shimazu 
reached  Hakata,  the  Christian  priests  showed  such  an  arro- 
gant demeanor  that  Hideyoshi,  enraged  by  their  conduct, 
ordered  that  they  should  leave  Japan  by  a  certain  day  and 
prohibited  the  people  from  embracing  Christianity." 

At  any  rate,  the  following  edict  was  promulgated  July 
25,  1587: 

"  Having  learned  from  our  faithful  counsellors  that  foreign  religious 
teachers  have  come  into  our  estates  where  they  preach  a  law  contrary 
to  that  of  Japan,  and  that  they  have  even  had  the  audacity  to  destroy 
temples  dedicated  to  our  Kami  and  Hotoke,  although  this  outrage 
merits  the  most  extreme  punishment,  wishing  nevertheless  to  show 
them  mercy  we  order  that  under  pain  of  death  they  quit  Japan 
within  twenty  days.  During  that  space  of  time  no  harm  nor  hurt 
will  be  done  them;  but  at  the  expiration  of  that  term,  we  order  that 
if  any  of  them  be  found  in  our  states  they  shall  be  seized  and  punished 
as  the  greatest  criminals.  As  for  the  Portuguese  merchants,  we  per- 
mit them  to  enter  our  ports,  there  to  continue  their  accustomed  trade 
and  to  remain  in  our  estates  provided  our  affairs  need  this;  but  we 
forbid  them  to  bring  any  foreign  religious  teachers  into  the  country 
under  the  penalty  of  the  confiscation  of  their  ships  and  goods." 

The  period  of  persecution  which  then  began  continued 
with  varying  degrees  of  intensity  and  vindictiveness  through- 
out the  reign  of  Hideyoshi  and  his  successors,  leyasu  and 
Hidetada  till,  by  the  year  1715,  Christianity  in  Japan  ap- 
peared to  be  almost  exterminated.  Many  of  the  mission- 
aries were  deported.  Those  who  sought  to  remain  were 
hunted  down  like  wild  beasts.  Many  of  the  Japanese 
Christians  recanted,  some  because  their  profession  of  faith 
had  been  merely  nominal,  and  others  because  their  courage 
was  not  great  enough  to  enable  them  to  face  the  frightful 
ordeal  with  which  a  remorseless  government  confronted 
them.  But  multitudes  were  faithful  to  the  end.  They 


ROMAN  CATHOLIC  AND  RUSSIAN  MISSIONS     615 

were  persecuted  without  mercy — stripped  of  their  posses- 
sions, burned,  beheaded,  crucified,  thrown  from  cliffs,  and 
subjected  to  every  other  form  of  torture  and  death  that 
fanatical  ingenuity  could  devise.  The  history  of  Christian 
martyrdoms  contains  no  more  tragically  sublime  manifes- 
tations of  constancy  than  those  which  Japan  affords. 
When,  December  9,  1603,  an  executioner  went  to  the  house 
of  Simon  Takeda  after  midnight  with  an  order  to  execute 
him  because  he  had  refused  an  offer  of  life  if  he  would  re- 
cant, we  read  that  he  thanked  the  executioner,  knelt  and 
prayed  before  a  picture  of  Christ,  awakened  his  mother  and 
his  wife,  arrayed  himself  in  ceremonial  robes,  begged  his 
family  and  servants  to  forgive  him  for  any  wrong  that  he 
had  done  them,  and  said  to  his  wife:  "The  hour  for  separa- 
tion has  come.  I  go  before  you  and  thus  show  the  road  by 
which  you  also  should  reach  Paradise.  I  will  pray  to  God 
for  you.  I  hope  that  ere  long  you  will  follow  in  my  foot- 
steps." 

He  then  calmly  bared  his  neck  for  the  executioner's 
sword.  As  his  head  fell  on  the  mat,  his  mother  laid  her 
hand  on  it  and  exclaimed:  "Oh,  my  fortunate  son,  you 
have  been  deemed  worthy  to  give  your  life  for  God's  ser- 
vice. How  blessed  am  I,  sinful  woman  though  I  am,  that 
I  should  be  the  mother  of  a  martyr  and  that  I  can  offer  as 
a  sacrifice  this  my  only  son,  for  whom  during  these  many 
years  I  have  so  lovingly  cared."  Both  mother  and  wife 
were  crucified  before  another  night  fell.1 

It  is  difficult  to  ascertain  just  how  many  Christians  there 
were  in  Japan  during  the  various  stages  of  Roman  Catholic 
missionary  effort,  or  how  many  suffered  martyrdom.  Eccle- 
siastical statistics  were  not  kept  with  such  care  as  they 
now  are.  Doubtless,  too,  many  records  were  lost  or  de- 
stroyed in  the  persecutions,  while  the  Roman  Catholic  cus- 
tom of  counting  all  persons  who  have  been  baptized  in  in- 
fancy as  well  as  in  later  years  does  not  always  make  the 
reported  numbers  indicative  of  actual  strength.  Certain 

1For  a  detailed  account  of  these  persecutions,  see  Otis  Gary's  History  of 
Christianity  in  Japan,  Vol.  I,  pp.  98-257. 


616  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

it  is,  however,  that  the  missionaries  had  a  large  following  in 
Japan  in  the  seventeenth  century,  and  that  several  thousand 
Christians  were  executed  for  their  faith  or  died  as  the  result 
of  the  hardships  which  the  persecutions  involved.  For 
more  than  a  century  Christianity  in  Japan  almost  disap- 
peared. A  few  believers  remained,  worshipping  in  out-of- 
the-way  places  or  hiding  from  hostile  eyes.  Occasionally, 
little  groups  gathered  and  sometimes  friendly  neighbors 
let  them  live  in  peace.  Now  and  then  a  daring  priest  went 
more  or  less  furtively  among  them,  giving  counsel  and  en- 
couragement. But  enmity  of  Christianity  was  deeply 
rooted  among  officials  and  common  people.  Suspected 
Japanese  were  compelled  to  trample  upon  the  cross  or  the 
image  of  the  Virgin  Mary.  Edicts  and  sign-boards  forbade 
Christian  profession  or  teaching  under  dire  penalties.  One 
tablet  bore  the  oft-quoted  inscription:  "So  long  as  the  sun 
warms  the  earth,  let  no  Christian  be  so  bold  as  to  come  to 
Japan;  and  let  all  know  that  if  the  King  of  Spain,  or  the 
Christians'  God,  or  the  great  God  of  all  violate  this  com- 
mand, he  shall  pay  for  it  with  his  head." 

The  Roman  Catholic  Church  in  Europe,  however,  never 
abandoned  its  purpose  to  reopen  mission  work  in  Japan, 
and  shortly  after  the  promulgation  of  the  treaty  of  1854 
between  Japan  and  the  United  States,  active  preparations 
were  made.  In  1856,  M.  Furet  and  M.  Mounicou,  after 
several  fruitless  efforts,  managed  to  get  to  Hakodate  on  a 
French  war-vessel,  and  after  a  stay  of  four  days  went  to 
the  Loochoo  Islands,  where  a  struggling  mission  had  been 
maintained  for  some  years  as  a  base  from  which  Japan 
might  again  be  entered.  In  1859  the  long-hoped-for  day 
dawned.  M.  Girard  landed  at  Yedo  September  6,  and  two 
months  later  M.  Mermet  arrived  in  Hakodate.  M.  Mou- 
nicou came  to  Yokohama  from  Loochoo  hi  1861.  Mission 
work  was  vigorously  resumed.  One  by  one  new  mission- 
aries arrived.  Caution  was  still  necessary,  and  in  1867 
persecution  again  broke  out.  There  were  more  deporta- 
tions, imprisonments,  sufferings,  and  deaths.  But  in  March, 
1872,  Monsignor  Petit  jean  wrote  to  a  priest  in  Hong  Kong 


ROMAN  CATHOLIC  AND  RUSSIAN  MISSIONS     617 

to  cable  the  following  message  to  the  Paris  headquarters 
of  the  Society:  "Edicts  against  Christians  removed. 
Prisoners  freed.  Inform  Rome,  Propagation  of  Faith, 
Holy  Infancy.  Need  immediately  fifteen  missionaries." 

At  that  time  the  missionaries  definitely  knew  of  15,000 
Christians,  and  they  believed  that  there  were  many  others 
who  secretly  held  to  the  Christian  faith  but  had  not  dared 
to  identify  themselves  with  it. 

Since  then  progress  has  been  steady.  By  1887  the  Japan 
Weekly  Mail  could  speak  of  the  mission  as  "a  large  and 
powerful  mission,  numbering  nearly  sixty  fathers,  and  over 
forty  sisters  of  charity."  Thirty  years  later  the  number 
of  foreigners  on  the  staff  had  risen  to  352,  with  179  Japanese 
workers,  270  churches,  and  76,134  members.  Seminaries, 
convents,  monasteries,  schools,  creches,  orphanages,  hos- 
pitals, and  leper  asylums  testify  to  the  breadth  and  power 
of  the  movement. 

The  Japanese  have  been  more  distrustful  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  missionaries  than  of  the  Protestants.  This  is 
partly  because  the  close  affiliation  of  the  priests  with  their 
home  governments  and  their  diplomatic  representatives 
in  Japan  has  aroused  suspicion  of  political  aims,  and  partly 
because  the  Roman  Catholic  polity  places  the  seat  of  au- 
thority in  Rome,  and,  as  the  Report  of  the  Societe  des  Mis- 
sions Etrangeres  for  1906  frankly  says:  "The  Japanese  na- 
tional pride  opposes  itself  to  permitting  that  a  foreigner 
should,  apart  from  the  Emperor,  have  control  over  them." 
Nevertheless,  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  in  Japan  is  a 
real  force  in  the  country,  and  it  can  point  to  a  long  line  of 
devoted  workers  and  an  impressive  roll  of  martyrs.  Some 
of  its  teachings  and  methods  are  at  a  far  remove  from 
those  which  represent  my  own  views.  Many  of  its  priests 
have  been  narrow,  intolerant,  and  arrogant.  They  have 
made  serious  blunders,  and  they  cannot  be  freed  from  blame 
for  a  course  of  conduct  which  had  something  to  do  with 
turning  an  initial  welcome  into  bitter  resentment,  and 
which,  while  not  of  itself  causing  persecution,  at  least 
broadened  its  scope  and  intensified  its  bitterness. 


618  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

But  while  candor  compels  this  stricture,  candor  also 
compels  hearty  recognition  of  courage,  persistence,  and 
personal  character.  Most  of  the  foreign  bishops  and  priests 
have  been,  and  still  are,  French,  and  of  a  distinctly  higher 
type  than  the  Spanish  priests  in  the  Philippine  and  South 
American  missions.  The  fair-minded  Protestant  who  writes 
of  them  may,  if  I  may  borrow  an  illustration,  treat  their 
defects  as  an  artist  should  treat  the  wart  on  Cromwell's 
face.  He  must  paint  it  in,  but  he  need  not  make  it  un- 
necessarily large,  nor  write  underneath  his  picture:  "Please 
note  especially  the  wart." 

The  story  of  the  Greek  Orthodox  Mission  of  the  Russian 
Church  is  a  shorter  one,  for  it  deals  with  a  more  limited 
work  and  for  a  briefer  period,  since  it  dates  only  from  1861. 
But  it  forms  a  part  of  the  Christian  movement  in  Japan 
which  is  of  no  small  importance.  The  mission  centred 
about  and  was  indeed  incarnated  in  an  extraordinary  per- 
sonality— the  great  Archbishop  Nicolai,  one  of  the  modern 
apostles  of  God  whom  all  communions  gladly  recognize. 
When  a  young  man  of  twenty-four  hi  Petrograd,  he  was 
chosen  by  the  Holy  Synod  as  chaplain  of  the  Russian  con- 
sulate at  Hakodate,  Japan.  He  eagerly  accepted  the  ap- 
pointment, and  on  his  ordination  took  the  name  Nicolai 
instead  of  Ivan  Kasatkin,  by  which  he  had  been  hitherto 
known.  Arriving  at  Hakodate  in  June,  1861,  he  was  de- 
lighted to  find  his  official  duties  so  light  that  he  had  time 
to  study  the  Japanese  language,  with  a  view  to  preaching 
to  the  people  of  the  city.  He  studied  with  Joseph  Neesima 
for  a  month,  and  after  that  with  various  teachers  until  he 
could  speak  in  the  native  tongue.  Opposition  to  Christi- 
anity was  strong,  and  progress  was  beset  with  difficulties 
and  at  times  danger.  But  in  April,  1868,  he  conducted 
with  tender  solemnity  a  service  in  his  own  rooms,  in  which 
he  administered  the  rite  of  baptism  to  three  Japanese — 
Sawabe,  Sakai,  and  Urano.  The  services  had  to  be  held  in 
secret,  and  the  converts  had  to  leave  town  immediately  to 
escape  punishment.  Sawabe  soon  afterward  brought  two 
other  Japanese,  Kannari  and  Arai,  to  Pere  Nicolai,  as  he 


ROMAN  CATHOLIC  AND  RUSSIAN  MISSIONS     619 

was  now  called.  The  good  priest  now  became  convinced 
that  the  time  had  come  to  give  his  whole  time  to  work 
among  the  Japanese.  He  applied  for  a  furlough  and  re- 
turned to  Russia  in  1870  to  interest  the  Holy  Synod,  and 
to  secure  financial  support  for  a  mission.  He  was  offered 
the  bishopric  of  Peking,  but  attractive  as  the  offer  was  he 
declined  it,  saying  that  he  had  consecrated  his  life  to  Japan. 
Thereupon  his  plans  were  approved ;  he  was  made  an  archi- 
mandrite; money  was  raised  for  his  work,  and  he  started 
back  to  Japan,  arriving  at  Hakodate  in  February,  1871. 

The  work  broadened.  Converts  carried  the  gospel  to 
other  places,  Sendai  among  others.  In  January,  1872, 
Nicolai  removed  to  Tokyo,  and  there  began  the  mission 
which  afterward  became  so  famous.  Some  of  the  con- 
verts were  imprisoned  and  harshly  treated,  but  they  sturdily 
clung  to  their  faith.  The  missionary  himself  was  sus- 
pected of  being  a  spy,  and  was  hampered  in  many  ways; 
but  nothing  could  daunt  him.  By  1883  he  could  report 
5  foreign  priests  and  teachers,  120  Japanese  evangelists,  of 
whom  11  were  ordained  priests,  148  organized  churches, 
and  a  Christian  constituency,  including  children,  of  8,863. 

The  political  difficulties  which  developed  between  Japan 
and  Russia  in  the  closing  years  of  the  century  and  the 
opening  years  of  the  twentieth  affected,  to  some  extent, 
the  position  of  the  mission  in  the  public  mind  as  compared 
with  the  popular  attitude  toward  the  Protestant  missions. 
Christianity  in  all  its  forms  was  still  unpopular,  although 
active  opposition  was  lessening.  But  the  Greek  Orthodox 
Church,  being  the  State  Church  of  Russia,  and  as  such 
closely  identified  with  its  government,  could  not  escape  the 
distrust  with  which  all  Russian  activities  were  regarded. 
One  of  the  priests  issued  a  statement  in  1903,  in  which  he 
said:  "From  the  present  political  situation  of  Japan  and 
Russia,  since  the  Japanese  Orthodox  Church  is  aided  by 
the  Russian  Missionary  Society,  some  are  led  to  believe 
that  the  church  is  necessarily  Russianized  and  given  to 
Russian  forms." 

He  proceeded  to  explain  that  this  was  a  misapprehen- 


620  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

sion,  but  the  Japanese  were  not  easily  convinced.  It  is 
immensely  to  the  credit  of  both  missionaries  and  Japanese 
that,  during  all  the  months  of  growing  suspicion  and  irri- 
tation between  the  two  countries,  and  the  outburst  of  the 
storm  of  war  in  1904,  the  work  of  the  mission  was  main- 
tained, with  some  difficulty,  indeed,  but  without  disaster. 
The  Russian  missionaries  were  neither  deported  nor  in- 
terned, but  were  allowed  to  go  on  with  their  duties.  This 
happy  result  was  due,  in  part,  to  the  remarkable  tact  and 
wisdom  of  Pere  Nicolai,  now  a  bishop,  in  scrupulously  ob- 
serving the  proprieties  of  a  very  delicate  situation,  avoiding 
unneutral  words  and  acts,  and  strictly  confining  himself 
and  his  priests  to  the  regular  duties  of  a  Christian  mission. 
And  it  was  also  due  to  the  equally  remarkable  fairness  and 
good  sense  of  the  Japanese  in  recognizing  the  fact  that  mis- 
sionary work  was  conducted  from  motives  quite  distinct 
from  the  objectives  of  the  war,  and  that  it  was  not  for  the 
benefit  of  Russia  but  for  the  direct  benefit  of  Japan.  As 
the  war  grew  hi  magnitude  and  intensity,  and  the  fate  of 
Japan  trembled  in  the  balance,  the  bishop  wrote:  "From 
our  hearts  we  give  thanks  and  praise  God  that  through  His 
mercy  the  Church  remains  in  peace  unmolested,  and  that 
its  members  still  maintain  their  good  faith,  each  worker 
doing  his  duty  faithfully.  We  also  give  thanks  to  the  Japa- 
nese Government  for  its  kind  protection.  From  the  be- 
ginning of  this  war,  the  government  declared  that  religion 
and  politics  or  war  should  not  be  confounded,  that  no  one 
should  be  hindered  in  religious  rites  or  faith.  As  you  know, 
this  declaration  has  been  kept." 

A  wide  field  of  effort  developed  in  the  camps,  in  which 
73,000  Russian  prisoners  were  confined.  The  bishop  as- 
signed all  he  could  spare  of  his  Japanese  priests  and  evangel- 
ists, 23  of  whom  could  speak  the  Russian  language,  to  do 
Christian  work  among  these  men,  and  to  distribute  copies 
of  the  four  Gospels  and  religious  tracts  and  books.  The 
bishop  himself  devoted  much  of  his  time  to  literary  work, 
writing  articles  and  pamphlets,  editing  periodicals,  and  re- 
vising his  translation  of  the  New  Testament.  He  was  made 


ROMAN  CATHOLIC  AND  RUSSIAN  MISSIONS     621 

an  archbishop  in  1906,  and  February  16,  1912,  he  died  at 
the  age  of  seventy-six,  honored  and  loved  not  only  by  his 
own  communion,  but  by  foreigners  and  Japanese  of  all 
faiths.  He  was  succeeded  by  Bishop  Sergie.  The  last 
report  of  the  mission  gives  267  churches  with  36,265  mem- 
bers, only  one  foreign  missionary,  159  Japanese  workers, 
yen  4,656  received  from  the  Society  in  Russia,  and  yen 
13,036  from  Japanese  sources — an  interesting  and  sug- 
gestive commentary  upon  the  success  of  the  mission  in 
developing  and  domesticating  the  work  with  a  compara- 
tively small  proportion  of  foreigners  to  superintend  it. 

The  Greek  Catholic  Church  can  hardly  be  said  to  have  a 
present  mission  work  in  Korea,  since  it  does  little  outside 
of  the  Russian  Consulate  in  Seoul,  where  the  services  are 
held.  The  report  in  1918  gives  a  total  baptized  member- 
ship of  only  630. 


CHAPTER  XXXVII 
PROTESTANT  MISSIONS   IN  JAPAN 

THE  first  Protestant  service  of  which  we  have  any  record 
was  conducted  by  that  fine  Christian  layman  and  American 
diplomat,  Townsend  Harris.  The  following  entry  appears 
in  his  diary:  "Sunday,  December  6,  1857.  This  is  the 
second  Sunday  hi  Advent;  assisted  by  Mr.  Heusken,  I 
read  the  full  service  in  an  audible  voice,  and  with  the  paper 
doors  of  the  houses  here  our  voices  could  be  heard  in  every 
part  of  the  building.  This  was,  beyond  doubt,  the  first 
time  that  the  English  version  of  the  Bible  or  the  American 
Protestant  Episcopal  service  was  ever  repeated  in  this 
city.  Two  hundred  and  thirty  years  ago  a  law  was  pro- 
mulgated in  Japan  inflicting  death  on  any  one  who  should 
use  any  of  the  rites  of  the  Christian  religion.  That  law  is 
still  unrepealed." 

This  service,  of  course,  was  for  his  own  household  and 
official  staff.  The  foundations  of  Protestant  missionary 
work  for  the  Japanese  were  laid  soon  afterward  by  a  re- 
markable group  of  men.  The  Reverend  John  Liggins,  of  the 
American  Protestant  Episcopal  Church,  who  arrived  May  2, 
1859;  the  Reverend  Charming  N.  Williams,  of  the  same 
church,  who  joined  him  two  months  later;  James  C.  Hep- 
burn, M.D.,  of  the  American  Presbyterian  Church,  who 
arrived  October  18  of  that  year;  the  Reverend  Guido  S. 
Verbeck,  the  Reverend  Samuel  R.  Brown,  and  D.  B.  Sim- 
mons, M.D.,  of  the  Dutch  Reformed  Church,  who  landed 
in  November — these  were  men  of  high  type,  characterized 
by  breadth  of  view,  intellectual  ability,  and  force  of  char- 
acter. Four  of  them,  Williams,  Hepburn,  Verbeck,  and 
Brown,  acquired  large  influence  over  the  Japanese  and  an 
international  reputation  as  Christian  statesmen.  Williams 
attained  fame  as  a  bishop  of  large  administrative  qualities. 

622 


PROTESTANT  MISSIONS  IN  JAPAN  623 

Hepburn  was  a  physician,  scholar,  author,  and  translator, 
of  whom  The  Japan  Mail  editorially  said  that  he  was  "a 
man  whose  name  will  be  remembered  with  respect  and 
affection  as  long  as  Yokohama  has  annals — a  man  of  beauty 
of  character,  untiring  charity,  absolute  self -negation,  steady 
zeal  hi  the  cause  of  everything  good,  constituting  a  picture 
which  could  not  fail  to  appeal  to  the  Japanese  people." 
On  his  ninetieth  birthday,  in  1905,  the  Emperor  of  Japan, 
although  burdened  with  the  anxieties  incident  to  a  decisive 
battle  in  the  war  with  Russia,  remembered  that  devoted 
missionary  and  conferred  upon  him  the  Imperial  Order  of 
the  Rising  Sun  in  recognition  of  his  distinguished  services 
to  Japan.  Brown's  great  work  as  an  educator  led  William 
Elliot  Griffis  to  write  his  biography  under  the  title:  A 
Maker  of  the  New  Orient.  Verbeck  was  teacher,  writer, 
statesman,  and  confidential  adviser  of  the  Japanese  Govern- 
ment, which  counselled  with  him  and  trusted  him  as  it  has 
trusted  no  other  man  from  the  West. 

The  beginnings  of  mission  work  were  so  humble  and  be- 
set by  such  difficulties  that  less  dauntless  men  would  have 
been  discouraged.  The  missionaries  were  regarded  with 
suspicion  and  dislike,  then*  motives  were  misunderstood, 
and  their  purpose  was  misrepresented.  Not  until  March, 
1860,  ten  months  after  the  first  arrivals,  could  any  Japanese 
be  persuaded  to  teach  them  the  language;  and  then  the 
only  one  who  could  be  secured  was  a  government  spy,  and 
the  only  pupils  were  a  few  little  boys  whose  parents  wanted 
them  to  learn  English.  Nearly  five  years  passed  before  a 
convert  was  baptized,  in  November,  1864.  But  those 
early  years  were  spent  in  quiet,  patient  study,  winning  the 
good-will  of  the  people  by  kindly,  Christlike  lives,  and  lay- 
ing broad  and  deep  foundations  for  coming  years  in  lan- 
guage helps  and  in  translations  of  portions  of  the  Bible  and 
of  Christian  books  and  tracts.  Gradually  the  Japanese 
began  to  understand  these  faithful  workers,  and  to  give 
their  confidence  to  them.  Gradually,  too,  the  truths  which 
they  taught  found  lodgment  in  the  hearts  of  earnest  people. 

The  lot  of  the  first  Christians  was  hard.    It  is  easy  to 


624  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

confess  Christ  in  a  land  where  Christianity  is  the  popular 
religion,  where  parents  pray  for  one's  conversion,  and  where 
church  membership  not  only  involves  no  real  sacrifice  but 
often  gives  increased  prestige  in  the  community.  The  first 
converts  in  Japan  had  to  break  with  their  relatives  and  lose 
then*  friends.  They  were  ostracized  by  society,  and  per- 
secuted by  the  religious  leaders  of  the  dominant  faiths. 
The  shopkeeper  found  that  his  customers  forsook  him. 
The  son  was  disowned  by  his  family.  The  ambitious  young 
man  was  debarred  from  office.  A  high  type  of  courage  was 
required  to  face  a  hostile  world,  to  stand  before  the  whole 
business,  social,  and  religious  order  and,  like  Martin  Luther, 
fling  out  the  sublime  challenge:  "Here  I  stand.  God  help 
me;  I  can  do  no  other."  In  a  literal  sense  that  we  in 
America  wot  not  of,  these  Asiatic  Christians  took  up  the 
Cross  to  follow  Him.  There  have  been  martyrs  in  these 
Eastern  lands,  men  and  women  who  counted  not  their 
lives  dear  unto  themselves  for  conscience  sake. 

The  missionaries  suffered  less  than  the  native  converts, 
but  their  position  was  far  from  comfortable  during  this 
period.  An  illustration  of  the  attitude  of  many  Japanese 
appeared  in  a  letter  sent  from  Kyoto  in  1884,  addressed 
"To  the  four  American  Barbarians — Davis,  Gordon, 
Learned  and  Greene,"  and  including  these  sentences: 
"You  have  come  from  a  far  country  with  the  evil  religion 
of  Christ  and  as  slaves  of  the  robber  Neesima.  .  .  .  Those 
who  brought  Buddhism  to  Japan  hi  ancient  times  were 
killed;  but  we  do  not  wish  to  defile  the  soil  of  Japan  with 
your  abominable  blood.  Hence  take  your  families  and  go 
quickly." 

This  was  rather  a  belated  manifestation  of  hostility,  for 
the  tide  of  national  favor  suddenly  turned.  The  Japanese 
became  eager  to  learn  Western  methods,  and  missionaries 
became  popular  almost  over  night,  not  because  of  their 
religious  character,  but  because  they  were  the  most  available 
foreigners  who  could  tell  the  Japanese  about  European  and 
American  history,  education,  government,  machinery,  bank- 
ing, navigation,  manufacturing,  and  military  organization. 


PROTESTANT  MISSIONS  IN  JAPAN  625 

Mission  schools  were  crowded.  Churches  doubled  and 
trebled  their  membership.  The  advice  of  missionaries  was 
sought  by  prominent  Japanese,  and  they  and  other  resident 
foreigners  were  treated  with  distinguished  consideration. 
Christianity  gained  6,000  communicants  in  1889,  and  so 
promising  were  the  signs  of  continued  growth  that  it  began 
to  look  as  11  Christianity  might  become  the  religion  of  Japan 
within  a  generation. 

The  Japanese  had  no  notion  of  allowing  aliens  to  gain 
control  of  their  country's  industrial  life.  As  soon  as  West- 
ern methods  were  understood,  suspicion  and  jealousy  re- 
vived, and  after  1889  the  tide  of  national  favor  ebbed  as  sud- 
denly and  violently  as  it  had  risen.  Life  in  Japan  was  not 
pleasant  for  foreigners  during  these  years.  They  were 
seldom  subjected  to  violence,  but  they  were  snubbed  and 
elbowed  aside  on  every  hand.  Mission  schools  dwindled. 
Chapel  congregations  fell  off,  and  new  converts  became  so 
scarce  that  they  hardly  more  than  filled  the  vacancies 
caused  by  death  and  dismissal.  "  The  night  of  the  nineties," 
the  missionaries  called  this  gloomy  period.  Some  came  to 
the  conclusion  that  the  opportunity  for  mission  work  in 
Japan  had  passed,  and  a  few  resigned  and  went  home. 

The  change  in  public  sentiment,  like  the  one  that  pre- 
ceded it,  was  not  primarily  due  to  the  fact  that  they  were 
missionaries,  but  to  the  fact  that  they  were  foreigners. 
They  shared  the  foreign  and  anti-foreign  reactions  of  this 
period  that  we  have  mentioned  in  a  former  chapter,  and 
that  affected  European  and  American  business  men  in  Japan 
quite  as  seriously  as  they  affected  missionary  work.  Many 
foreigners  who  had  been  employed  by  the  Japanese  were 
dismissed.  Others  who  were  engaged  in  trade  saw  their 
business  go  to  pieces,  and  their  curses  were  both  loud  and 
deep. 

A  contributory  cause,  however,  lay  in  the  reports  of  Japa- 
nese who  had  gone  to  Europe  and  America  to  study  the 
institutions  and  methods  of  Western  lands,  and  to  learn 
the  secret  of  their  ascendancy.  They  had  supposed  that 
Christianity  was  the  religion  of  all  the  modern  progressive 


626  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

nations  and  that,  if  Japan  were  to  take  her  place  as  an 
equal  among  them,  she  must  adopt  their  religion  as  well  as 
their  military,  naval,  industrial,  and  educational  systems. 
They  were  impressed  by  a  remark  which  Bismarck  was  re- 
ported to  have  made,  that,  if  Japan  expected  to  be  regarded 
as  a  world-power  of  the  first  rank,  she  must  become  Chris- 
tian. There  was  actually  some  talk  for  a  time  of  making 
Christianity  the  national  religion,  and  Mr.  William  T.  Ellis 
says  that  when  he  was  in  Tokyo  he  was  told  by  a  govern- 
ment official,  whose  "utterance  upon  any  governmental 
question  would  not  go  unheeded  in  the  world's  capitals, 
that  it  had  been  the  intention  to  make  the  Crown  Prince 
a  Christian,  so  that  the  next  Emperor  would  be  counted 
among  the  Christian  rulers  of  the  earth." 

Then  the  Japanese  heard  with  surprise  that  Western 
nations  were  only  partially  Christian;  that  the  people  of 
the  United  States  carefully  separated  church  and  state; 
that  the  French  and  Italian  Governments  were  hostile  to 
the  church;  that,  while  Great  Britain  and  Germany  had 
established  churches,  a  large  part  of  the  population  in  both 
countries  was  outside  of  them;  and  that  the  great  cities  in 
all  of  these  lands  reeked  with  immorality,  intemperance, 
Sunday  desecration,  and  other  forms  of  iireligion.  The 
inquiring  Japanese  went  back  to  tell  their  countrymen  that 
Western  nations  were  not  really  Christian;  that  their  power 
was  due  to  their  science,  inventions,  discoveries,  and  manu- 
factures instead  of  to  their  religion;  that  the  Japanese 
could  now  handle  the  former  themselves;  that  Christianity 
could  be  left  out  of  account  as  a  factor  in  the  material  pro- 
gramme; and  that  Japan's  position  in  the  world  would  be 
determined  by  her  military  and  industrial  efficiency  rather 
than  by  her  religion. 

This  anti-foreign  reaction  culminated  in  1896,  and  by 
the  opening  of  the  twentieth  century  its  force  had  been 
spent.  By  that  tune  the  Japanese  had  begun  to  feel  more 
sure  of  themselves,  and  their  jealousy  and  dislike  of  foreign- 
ers considerably  abated.  Since  then,  the  attitude  of  the 
Japanese  toward  foreigners  hi  both  business  and  mission- 


PROTESTANT  MISSIONS  IN  JAPAN  627 

aiy  life  has  been  one  of  personal  kindness  and  good-natured 
recognition,  as  long  as  the  foreigners  have  kept  their  proper 
place  and  recognized  the  fact  that  they  are  not  superior 
beings,  but  residents  or  visitors  among  a  people  who  pro- 
pose to  manage  their  own  affairs,  and  who  gladly  welcome 
co-operation  but  sternly  resent  dictation  or  patronage. 
The  Japanese  now  accept  most  cordially  the  assistance 
which  the  missionaries  can  give.  They  have  begun  to  un- 
derstand that  the  best  elements  in  the  life  of  the  enlightened 
and  progressive  nations  of  the  world  are  Christian;  that 
the  teachings  of  the  Founder  of  Christianity  are  pure  and 
ennobling;  that  missionaries  have  come  to  communicate 
these  teachings;  and  that  they  should  not  be  judged  by 
those  of  their  countrymen  who  openly  disregard  them. 

The  attitude  of  the  government  toward  Christianity  is 
friendly.  Numerous  evidences  of  this  are  cited  in  other 
chapters.  It  is  true  that  the  Emperor,  the  Elder  States- 
men, and  a  large  majority  of  officials  of  all  grades  are  not 
Christians,  and  that  so  far  as  they  are  indifferent  to  Bud- 
dhism their  indifference  tends  toward  agnosticism  rather 
than  toward  Christianity.  Nevertheless,  the  governmental 
policy  is  one  of  fairness  to  all  faiths.  Article  XXVIII  of 
the  Constitution  provides  that  "Japanese  subjects  shall, 
within  limits  not  prejudicial  to  peace  and  order,  and  not 
antagonistic  to  their  duties  as  subjects,  enjoy  freedom  of 
religious  belief." 

Count  Katsura,  then  Prime  Minister,  said  in  1904: 
"Japan  stands  for  religious  freedom.  This  is  a  principle 
embodied  in  her  Constitution,  and  her  practice  is  in  accord- 
ance with  that  principle.  A  man  may  be  a  Buddhist,  a 
Christian,  or  even  a  Jew,  without  suffering  for  it.  ... 
There  are  Christian  churches  in  every  large  city  and  in 
almost  every  town  in  Japan;  and  they  all  have  complete 
freedom  to  teach  and  worship  in  accordance  with  their 
own  convictions.  These  churches  send  out  men  to  extend 
the  influence  of  Christianity  from  one  end  of  the  country 
to  the  other  as  freely  as  such  a  thing  might  be  done  in  the 
United  States,  and  without  attracting  much  if  any  more 


628  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

attention.  There  are  numerous  Christian  newspapers  and 
magazines  which  obtain  their  licenses  precisely  as  other 
newspapers  and  magazines  and  as  a  matter  of  course. 
Christian  schools,  some  of  them  conducted  by  foreigners 
and  some  by  Japanese,  are  found  everywhere,  and  recently 
an  ordinance  has  been  issued  by  the  Department  of  Educa- 
tion under  which  Christian  schools  of  a  certain  grade  are 
able  to  obtain  all  the  privileges  granted  to  government 
schools  of  the  same  grade.  There  are  few  things  which  are 
a  better  proof  of  the  recognition  of  rights  than  the  right  to 
hold  property.  In  many  cases,  associations  composed  of 
foreign  missionaries  permanently  residing  in  Japan  have 
been  incorporated  by  the  Department  of  Home  Affairs. 
These  associations  are  allowed  to  'own  and  manage  land, 
buildings  and  other  property  for  the  extension  of  Christi- 
anity, the  carrying  on  of  Christian  education,  and  the  per- 
formance of  works  of  charity  and  benevolence.'  It  should 
be  added  also  that  they  are  incorporated  under  the  article 
in  the  Civil  Code  which  provides  for  the  incorporation  of 
associations  founded  for  'purposes  beneficial  to  the  public'; 
and  as  'their  object  is  not  to  make  a  profit  out  of  the  con- 
duct of  their  business,'  no  taxes  are  levied  on  their. incomes. 
.  .  .  Christian  literature  has  entrance  into  the  military  and 
naval  hospitals,  and  a  relatively  large  number  of  the  trained 
nurses  employed  in  them  are  Christian  women."  * 

Indeed,  the  government  has  virtually  recognized  Chris- 
tianity as  one  of  the  religions  of  the  Empire.  In  the  war 
with  Russia  the  War  Department  authorized  the  appoint- 
ment of  chaplains  for  the  armies  in  Manchuria.  The  mis- 
sionaries respectfully  asked  that  Christian  ministers  as 
well  as  Buddhist  and  Shinto  priests  be  appointed.  The 
officers  who  had  the  power  of  selection  were  not  disposed 
to  accede  to  the  request;  but  when  it  was  presented  to 
the  Imperial  Cabinet  through  the  good  offices  of  Sir  Claude 
Macdonald,  the  British  Ambassador,  and  Count  Inouye, 
the  influential  Japanese  statesman,  that  body  promptly 
sanctioned  the  appointment  of  six  British  and  American 

1  Interview  with  the  Reverend  William  Imbrie,  D.D. 


PROTESTANT  MISSIONS  IN  JAPAN  629 

missionaries  and  six  Japanese  Christians  as  chaplains  with 
the  transport  and  commissariat  privileges  accorded  to  other 
chaplains.  The  agents  of  the  Bible  Societies  received 
special  permission  to  distribute  copies  of  the  Bible  among 
the  men  of  the  army  and  navy,  and  a  Vice-Admiral 
promised  to  send  to  every  ship  in  the  navy  the  Bibles 
and  other  religious  reading  that  the  agents  might  wish  to 
send. 

When,  early  in  1912,  the  Vice-Minister  of  Home  Affairs 
for  Japan,  Mr.  Tokonami,  called  a  conference  of  the  re- 
ligious leaders  of  the  Empire  "for  the  upholding  of  morality 
and  the  betterment  of  social  conditions,"  he  invited  Chris- 
tians, Buddhists,  and  Shintoists  alike  to  send  representatives. 
Some  of  the  missionaries  were  rather  doubtful  of  the  wisdom 
of  accepting  the  invitation,  fearing  that  acceptance  might 
be  construed  as  placing  Christianity  on  a  level  with  Bud- 
dhism and  Shintoism,  as  if  all  three  were  simply  different 
sects  of  a  common  religion.  They  knew,  too,  that  govern- 
mental recognition  in  Japan  involves  a  certain  degree  of 
relationship  to  and  supervision  by  the  government,  and 
they  believed  that  Christianity  could  best  maintain  its 
true  character  if  it  stood  quite  free  from  all  political  affilia- 
tions. Other  missionaries  and  the  Japanese  Christians  took 
a  more  favorable  view,  and  the  conference  was  attended  by 
thirteen  Shintoists,  fifty  Buddhists,  and  seven  Japanese 
Christians — one  each  of  the  Baptist,  Methodist,  Presby- 
terian, Congregational,  Episcopal,  Roman  Catholic,  and 
Greek  Catholic  communions.  The  omission  of  Confuci- 
anism was  significant  as  showing  that  it  is  not  regarded  as 
one  of  the  separate  religions  of  Japan,  its  ethics  and  ancestor- 
worship  finding  expression  in  other  ways.  The  government 
was  represented  by  four  members  of  the  Cabinet  and  sev- 
eral vice-ministers  and  bureau  chiefs.  The  conference 
continued  in  session  four  days.  Its  sessions  were  private, 
but  one  can  imagine  the  decorum  with  which  the  Japanese 
would  conduct  the  proceedings,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the 
convictions  of  the  delegates  were  as  varied  as  their  robes — 
the  Shintoists  white  and  gray;  the  Buddhists  red,  yellow, 


630  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

and  purple;    and  the  Christians  black.    Mr.   Tokonami 
sanctioned  a  public  statement  which  included  the  following : 

"1.  The  primary  intention  in  holding  the  conference  is  to  direct 
attention  to  religion  as  a  necessary  means  to  the  highest  spiritual  and 
moral  welfare  of  both  the  individual  and  the  nation.  For  a  number 
of  years  this  matter  has  not  been  given  the  importance  that  properly 
belongs  to  it,  and  the  primary  purpose  of  the  conference  is  to  reassert 
that  importance. 

"2.  No  attempt  is  intended  to  unite  the  adherents  of  the  several 
religions  in  one  body,  still  less  to  establish  a  new  religion.  Shintoism, 
Buddhism  and  Christianity  are  all  religions;  but  in  certain  important 
particulars  each  differs  from  the  others  and  the  religious  convictions 
of  the  adherents  of  each  should  be  respected  without  interference. 
It  may,  however,  be  confidently  presumed  that  Shintoists,  Buddhists 
and  Christians  alike  will  cordially  recognize  a  responsibility  to  act 
as  fellow-laborers  for  the  advancement  of  the  spiritual  and  moral 
interests  of  the  nation  to  the  utmost  of  their  ability. 

"3.  Shintoism  and  Buddhism  have  long  had  a  recognized  place  as 
religions  of  the  Japanese  people.  Christianity  should  also  be  ac- 
corded a  similar  place." 

Opinions  as  to  the  value  of  the  conference  differed  after 
as  well  as  before  it.  Some  missionaries  deplored  it.  Others 
went  so  far  as  to  declare  that  "the  conference  is  the  most 
important  event  for  Christianity  since  the  edict  boards 
against  Christianity  were  removed  over  a  generation  ago." 
Perhaps  the  prevailing  opinion  was  expressed  by  Professor 
A.  K.  Reischauer  of  the  Meiji  Gakiun  (College),  Tokyo, 
when  he  wrote:  "We  have  in  the  statement  of  the  Vice- 
Minister  a  recognition  of  the  great  importance  of  religion 
as  a  means  to  the  highest  spiritual  and  moral  welfare  of 
both  the  individual  and  the  nation.  This  recognition  is  in 
sharp  contrast  with  the  views  held  by  the  great  majority 
of  Japanese  statesmen  during  the  past  two  or  three  decades. 
How  widely  this  view  of  the  Vice-Minister  is  held  in  the 
official  world  it  is  hard  to  say ;  but  it  is  certainly  gratifying 
that  a  man  as  influential  as  Mr.  Tokonami  should  give  ex- 
pression to  such  opinions.  Now,  the  main  feature  of  Mr. 
Tokonami 's  scheme  is  that  it  recognizes  two  things  about 
Christianity.  One  of  these  is  that,  though  the  Constitution 


PROTESTANT  MISSIONS  IN  JAPAN  631 

of  Japan  recognizes  the  principle  of  religious  liberty,  Chris- 
tianity has  not  had  a  fair  chance  in  this  land;  the  other 
point  is  that  Christianity  is  worthy  to  be  recognized  as  a 
religion  which  can  contribute  something  to  Japan's  welfare." 

It  would  be  easy  to  cite  other  evidences  of  friendly  feel- 
ing toward  Christianity.  Governors  and  mayors  often 
accept  invitations  to  address  annual  meetings  of  religious 
bodies.  At  the  coronation  of  the  present  Emperor,  several 
Christians  were  included  in  the  list  of  Japanese  who  re- 
ceived honors;  some  of  them,  like  the  Reverend  Doctor 
Motoda,  Headmaster  of  St.  Paul's  College,  Tokyo,  and 
Miss  Ume  Tsuda,  Principal  of  a  school  for  girls,  being  so 
prominent  as  Christian  workers  that  their  selection  implied 
an  approval  of  their  work.  Never  before  had  Christians 
been  so  honored  by  the  throne. 

Christian  workers  who  are  known  to  be  favorably  dis- 
posed toward  the  government  receive  many  courtesies. 
An  American  missionary,  the  Reverend  Doctor  George  P. 
Pierson,  writes:  "I  have  to  report  the  placing  of  forty-one 
railway  stations  at  our  disposal  for  addresses,  the  official 
assembling  of  audiences,  and  a  free  pass  on  the  line  when 
engaged  in  this  particular  work.  The  Railway  Depart- 
ment of  the  Government  has  for  a  long  time  felt  the  need 
of  moral  instruction  for  its  employees.  Buddhist  and 
Shinto  priests  have  had  the  privilege  of  holding  meetings 
at  the  stations,  and  latterly  Christian  speakers  have  not 
only  been  allowed  but  even  invited.  When  I  wish  to  speak 
at  a  station  or  two,  I  ask  our  local  station-master  the  day 
before  to  make  arrangements.  He  telephones  down  the 
line,  fixes  the  hour,  and  next  day  stands  ready  to  furnish 
me  with  a  pass.  When  I  reach  the  station,  I  find  the  main 
waiting-room  arranged  like  a  chapel,  with  table,  glass  of 
water,  and  sometimes  a  vase  of  flowers.  The  seats  are  oc- 
cupied by  the  station-master,  his  assistant,  the  ticket  man, 
the  telegraph  men,  the  baggage  men,  and  in  almost  every 
case  by  some  of  the  women  and  children  from  families  of 
the  men,  as  well  as  by  people  from  the  stores  near  by. 
The  station-master  asks  me  into  his  office,  gives  tea,  and 


632  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

sometimes  offers  lunch.  I  can  leave  a  package  of  books  in 
the  men's  room,  and  send  them  papers  regularly  thereafter." 

For  a  score  of  years,  Christian  work  has  steadily  pro- 
gressed, and  the  Japanese  churches  have  made  solid  gains. 
At  the  Semi-Centennial  of  Protestant  Missions  in  Tokyo, 
the  Reverend  Doctor  William  Imbrie  was  able  to  say: 
"Fifty  years  ago,  notice  boards  were  standing  on  the  high- 
ways declaring  Christianity  a  forbidden  religion;  to-day 
these  same  notice  boards  are  seen  standing  in  the  Museum 
in  Tokyo  as  things  of  historical  interest.  Less  than  fifty 
years  ago,  the  Christian  Scriptures  could  be  printed  only 
in  secret;  to-day  Bible  Societies  scatter  them  far  and  wide 
without  let  or  hindrance.  Even  forty  years  ago,  there  was 
not  an  organized  church  in  all  Japan;  to-day  there  are 
Synods  and  Conferences  and  Associations,  with  congrega- 
tions dotting  the  Empire  from  the  Hokkaido  to  Formosa. 
To-day,  Christians  from  the  north  and  south  and  east  and 
west  gather  together  in  the  capital  to  celebrate  the  Semi- 
centennial of  the  planting  of  Protestant  Christianity  in 
Japan,  and  men  of  high  position  in  the  nation  cordially 
recognize  the  fact  that  Christianity  in  Japan  has  won  for 
itself  a  place  worthy  of  recognition." 

Christianity  has  made  great  strides  hi  Japan  since  these 
words  were  spoken.  A  three-year  national  evangelistic 
campaign,  inaugurated  by  a  joint  committee  of  Protestant 
churches  and  missions  in  1913,  resulted  in  4,788  meetings, 
attended  by  777,119  persons,  of  whom  27,350  professed 
conversion.  Of  the  meetings  in  Kobe,  the  Reverend  H.  P. 
Jones  wrote  that  the  "first  night  the  church,  which  seats 
900,  was  filled  and  many  were  turned  away.  The  next  night 
a  theatre  seating  2,000  was  crowded  to  the  doors,  and  again 
many  were  turned  away.  Mr.  Ando,  the  lay  leader  of  the 
temperance  movement  in  Japan,  spoke  for  an  hour.  Then 
for  another  hour  that  packed  house  quietly  listened  to  Doctor 
Ebina  of  Tokyo.  The  next  day  the  capacious  Y.  M.  C.  A. 
building  was  filled  to  the  limit  morning,  afternoon  and 
evening.  In  a  club  house  near  by  a  meeting  for  children 
was  attended  by  3,500.  Monday  night,  the  people  literally 


PROTESTANT  MISSIONS  IN  JAPAN  633 

jammed  the  largest  theatre,  and  a  sign  requested  Chris- 
tians not  to  come  into  the  building  so  that  non-Christians 
could  have  the  seats.  The  police  ordered  the  doors  closed, 
pronouncing  the  house  full,  but  people  kept  coming  for 
more  than  an  hour  demanding  entrance."1 

Protestant  Christianity  hi  Japan  is  now  represented  by 
1,079  organized  churches,  90,172  adult  communicants,  a 
constituency  (including  children  and  enrolled  catechumens) 
of  123,222;  2,861  Japanese  workers,  174  kindergartens,  62 
elementary  schools,  56  middle  schools,  6  normal  schools, 
14  colleges,  28  theological  and  Bible  schools,  16  industrial 
training-schools,  9  hospitals,  9  orphanages,  an  ex-prisoners' 
home  and  school,  and  2  day-nurseries.  Japanese  Christians 
contributed  for  the  support  of  this  work  during  the  year  in 
question  577,560  yen,  in  addition  to  the  sums  sent  by  the 
mission  boards  in  Great  Britain  and  North  America. 
Roman  Catholics  report  270  churches,  with  76,134  members, 
and  Russian  Greek  Catholics  267  churches,  with  36,265, 
swelling  Christianity's  total  in  Japan  to  235,621.  These 
figures,  which  will  be  exceeded  by  the  next  report,  do  not 
include  Korea,  whose  figures  I  give  in  another  chapter. 
Japanese  churches  are  not  only  alert  and  aggressive  in 
their  plans  and  work  at  home,  but  they  have  organized 
missionary  societies  to  follow  their  countrymen  who  have 
emigrated  to  Korea,  China,  and  Formosa.  The  Kumiai 
churches  in  particular  have  undertaken  an  active  work  in 
Korea,  sending  over  a  considerable  number  of  ministers 
and  evangelists,  and  developing  churches  in  several  cities. 
Their  efforts  are  encouraged  by  the  government  because 
they  are  deemed  helpful  in  strengthening  Japanese  influ- 
ence in  Korea,  and  in  promoting  the  national  policy  of 
assimilation. 

The  influence  of  Christianity  is  far  greater  than  official 
reports  can  indicate.  In  most  countries  Christianity  made 
its  first  converts  among  the  lower  strata  of  society;  but  in 
Japan  it  has  won  its  greatest  successes  among  the  Samurai, 
or  knightly  class,  which  has  furnished  the  majority  of  the 

1  Article  in  The  Missionary  Review  of  the  World,  January,  1917. 


634  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

army  and  navy  officers,  journalists,  legislators,  educators, 
and  leading  men  generally  of  the  new  Japan.  While  ap- 
proximately one  person  in  every  thousand  of  the  popula- 
tion is  a  Christian,  one  in  every  hundred  of  the  educated 
classes  is  a  Christian.  The  personnel  of  the  churches  in 
Japan  probably  averages  higher  hi  intelligence  and  social 
position  than  in  any  other  land;  though  of  course  many 
exceptions  could  be  made  to  such  a  generalization.  The 
proportion  of  Christians  is  noticeably  high  among  editors 
and  school-teachers.  At  the  time  of  my  second  visit  to 
Japan,  there  were  said  to  be  scores  of  Christian  editors 
in  Tokyo  alone,  and  fourteen  members  of  the  Imperial 
Diet  were  of  the  same  faith.  Christians  are  also  to  be 
found  among  the  officers  of  the  army  and  navy,  and  the 
ranks  of  business  and  professional  men  of  high  standing. 
Joseph  Hardy  Neesima,  founder  of  the  Doshisha  College 
hi  Kyoto;  Yoitsu  Honda,  first  Bishop  of  the  Methodist 
Episcopal  Church  in  Japan;  Kenkichi  Kataoka,  formerly 
President  of  the  Lower  House  of  the  Imperial  Diet;  Tasuku 
Harada,  President  of  the  Doshisha;  Kajinosuke  Ibuka, 
President  of  the  Meiji  Gakuin  in  Tokyo ;  Masahisa  Uemura, 
theologian,  editor,  and  preacher  of  Tokyo — these  are  names 
of  which  the  church  in  any  land  might  well  be  proud,  men 
of  the  first  order  of  character  and  ability.  "  One  would 
indeed  be  very  courageous,"  says  Tyler  Dennett,  "as  well 
as  something  else,  to  suggest  in  Japan  to  Professor  Nitobe 
of  the  Imperial  University,  Senator  Suroku  Ebara  of  the 
House  of  Peers,  Doctor  Ukita,  editor  of  the  Taiyo;  Taku- 
taro  Sakai  of  the  Mitsui  Bank,  Mr.  Kobayashi,  the  tooth- 
powder  man;  Mr.  Ohara,  the  millionaire  silk  manufacturer 
of  Kurashiki;  Mr.  Hatano  of  the  Ayabe  Silk  Filatures; 
Madame  Yajima  and  Miss  Tsuda,  both  of  whom  were  re- 
cently decorated  by  the  Emperor;  Madame  Hirooka, 
daughter  of  the  Mitsui  family,  and  one  of  the  richest  women 
in  Japan,  that  they  were  'rice  Christians.'"  1  When  the 
Reverend  Doctor  Henry  Sloane  Coffin  of  New  York  at- 
tended a  Sunday  service  in  Doctor  Uemura's  church  in 

1  Article  in  Asia,  January,  1918. 


PROTESTANT  MISSIONS  IN  JAPAN  635 

Tokyo,  he  found  that  the  office-bearers  of  the  congregation 
included  the  Vice-Mayor  of  the  city,  a  professor  hi  the 
Imperial  University,  an  editor  of  one  of  the  principal  daily 
newspapers,  the  head  of  the  Government  Bureau  of  Agri- 
culture, a  general  in  the  army,  a  prominent  broker  and 
banker,  and  a  judge  of  the  Court  of  Appeals. 

Very  earnest  many  of  the  Japanese  Christians  are.  An 
army  officer,  who  was  sent  to  open  a  new  post  at  Kyodo  on 
the  Antung-Mukden  Railway  in  Manchuria,  where  he  had 
3,000  Japanese  laborers  under  his  command  for  construc- 
tion work,  made  a  neat  little  church  the  first  building  to  be 
erected,  he  and  his  equally  devoted  Christian  wife  and  a 
few  other  Japanese  Christians  paying  for  it  themselves. 
One  may  now  find  quite  a  number  of  Japanese  churches  in 
Korea  and  Manchuria  which  have  been  developed  without 
foreign  assistance,  and  whose  members  evidence  the  gen- 
uineness of  their  faith  by  their  works. 

We  shall  long  remember  the  first  Japanese  Christian  whom 
we  met  after  our  arrival  in  Japan — Kawai  Suye  Kichi,  of 
the  household  of  the  Reverend  and  Mrs.  Theodore  MacNair, 
in  Tokyo.  Reared  among  the  mountains  of  Shinshui,  he 
had  earned  a  living  by  transporting  loads  over  the  pass  by 
which  multitudes  of  pilgrims  journeyed  to  the  sacred  places 
beyond.  The  railroad  destroyed  his  business,  but  one  day 
it  brought  to  his  mountain  home  the  tired  missionary 
family,  seeking  rest.  Ever  intent  upon  their  Father's 
business,  they  failed  not  to  speak  of  Him.  Kawai  Suye 
Kichi  heard  and  believed.  When  the  missionaries  returned 
to  Tokyo,  he  begged  to  be  allowed  to  go  with  them  that  he 
might  be  more  fully  instructed.  In  due  time  he  was  bap- 
tized. A  plain  man  past  middle  age,  he  grew  mighty  in 
prayer  and  in  the  Scriptures,  and  expounded  the  way  of 
life  to  many  in  his  former  village,  which  he  regularly  visited. 
We  learned  that  the  day  before  we  landed  this  brother  at 
morning  prayers  had  made  special  intercession  for  us,  sim- 
ply but  earnestly  asking  God  to  be  with  us  during  all  our 
visit,  and  to  make  us  a  "witness  for  Jesus  Christ"  wherever 
we  went.  As  we  were  beginning  our  tour  of  Asia,  and  were 


636  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

then  without  experience  in  speaking  through  an  inter- 
preter to  strangers  of  a  different  race  and  modes  of  thought, 
the  knowledge  of  such  a  prayer  and  the  affectionate  welcome 
of  that  humble  child  of  God  warmed  our  hearts,  and  made 
our  speaking  to  Japanese  congregations  seem  much  easier. 

A  fine  type  of  Christian  faith  was  illustrated  shortly  after 
an  explosion  on  a  Japanese  battleship  some  years  ago. 
The  son  of  a  Vice-Admiral  was  involved  in  the  wreckage. 
While  search  was  being  made  for  the  bodies,  many  promi- 
nent Japanese  called  upon  the  mother  to  offer  their  con- 
dolence. She  told  them  that  she  felt  the  need  of  the  con- 
solations of  the  Christian  religion  in  that  time  of  anxiety, 
and  she  called  upon  her  Japanese  pastor  to  read  the  Scrip- 
tures and  to  offer  prayer.  He  was  a  young  man  who  had 
been  recently  graduated  from  the  Theological  Seminary. 
It  was  a  difficult  position  for  him;  but  with  tact  and  fidelity 
he  opened  the  New  Testament,  read  suitable  passages,  and 
then  earnestly  prayed,  while  Japanese  in  high  official  posi- 
tion, some  of  whom  had  never  heard  such  words  before, 
bowed  with  the  anxious  mother.  Later,  the  body  of  the 
son  was  found.  The  stricken  parents  announced  that  the 
public  funeral  would  be  followed  by  a  Christian  service,  and 
that  any  of  their  friends  who  wished  to  come  would  be 
welcome.  A  distinguished  company  assembled.  The  young 
Japanese  again  spoke,  impressively  dwelling  upon  the  Chris- 
tian meaning  of  death,  and  the  comfort  which  God  gives 
to  His  children  in  the  time  of  need.  Such  an  evidence  of 
Christian  faith,  wholly  independent  of  the  presence  or  sug- 
gestion of  any  foreign  missionary,  is  a  significant  illustra- 
tion of  the  hold  that  Christianity  has  taken  upon  the 
Japanese. 

It  would  be  easy  to  multiply  instances  of  a  kind  that 
cannot  be  tabulated  in  statistical  tables.  For  example,  a 
few  years  ago,  the  pupils  of  the  government  schools  in  a 
certain  city  were  not  allowed  to  attend  the  Sunday-school 
of  the  local  church.  Now  they  are  not  only  free  to  attend, 
but  six  of  the  teachers  are  Christians,  and  four  of  them 
teach  hi  that  Sunday-school.  Three  successive  principals 


PROTESTANT  MISSIONS  IN  JAPAN  637 

of  the  Government  Normal  School  in  the  same  city,  and 
several  of  the  teachers  from  the  Normal  and  other  public 
schools,  although  not  Christians,  have  been  members  of 
the  Bible  class. 

In  another  city  I  obtained  equally  suggestive  facts. 
There  are  five  classes  in  the  government  school.  In  the 
first-year  class  there  were  forty-seven  believers  in  Shinto- 
ism;  in  the  second-year  class  thirty-one;  in  the  third-year 
class  eleven;  in  the  fourth-year  class  eight,  and  in  the  fifth 
class,  the  graduating  class,  only  three.  These  statistics 
were  published  by  the  Japanese  principal  of  the  school. 
They  show  how  education  is  affecting  Shintoism  even  in 
the  government  schools,  which  are  supposed  to  be  most 
favorable  to  it.  The  same  report  of  the  principal  showed 
that  there  were  seven  students  who  were  Christians,  all  of 
whom  were  in  the  two  highest  classes.  Of  the  five  who 
stood  at  the  head  of  the  graduating  class,  four  were  Chris- 
tians. The  principal  reported  that  fourteen  other  students 
gave  "no  religion"  in  response  to  his  inquiries,  but  stated 
that  they  were  "inquirers."  A  missionary  asked  the  prin- 
cipal what  they  were  inquirers  of,  and  he  replied:  "Chris- 
tianity." 

A  professor  in  the  Imperial  University  at  Tokyo  has  de- 
clared that  "at  least  a  million  Japanese  outside  the  Chris- 
tian church  have  so  come  to  understand  Christianity  that, 
though  as  yet  unbaptized,  they  are  framing  their  lives  ac- 
cording to  the  teachings  of  Christ";  and  Marquis  Okuma 
remarked:  "Although  Christianity  has  enrolled  less  than 
200,000  believers  (this  was  in  1912),  yet  the  indirect  influ- 
ence of  Christianity  has  poured  into  every  realm  of  Japa- 
nese life." 

This  thought  is  emphasized  by  Mr.  Kanzo  Uchimura,  a 
prominent  Japanese,  who  avows  himself  a  Christian  though 
not  connected  with  any  church,  and  who  declared  in  a 
published  article:  "There  are  hundreds  and  thousands  of 
Christians  in  Japan  who  have  had  nothing  to  do  with  mis- 
sionaries, and  who,  without  belonging  to  any  church,  and 
knowing  nothing  about  dogmas  and  sacraments  and  eccle- 


638  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

siastical  orders,  are  yet  devout  believers  in  God  and  Christ. 
There  is  such  a  thing  as  'Christianity  outside  of  churches,' 
and  it  is  taking  hold  of  the  Japanese  people  far  more  strongly 
than  the  missionaries  imagine.  The  Western  idea,  that  a 
religion  must  show  itself  in  an  organized  form  before  it 
can  be.  recognized  as  a  religion  at  all,  is  alien  to  the  Japa- 
nese mind.  With  us,  religion  is  more  a  family  affair  than 
national  or  social,  as  is  shown  by  the  strong  hold  that  Con- 
fucianism has  had  upon  us  without  showing  itself  in  any 
organized  societies  and  movements.  And  I  am  confident 
that  Christianity  is  now  slowly  but  steadily  taking  the  place 
of  Confucianism  as  the  family  religion  of  the  Japanese. 
Christianity  is  making  progress  in  this  country  far  ahead  of 
missionaries.  This  new  form  of  Christianity  adopted  by 
my  countrymen  is  neither  Orthodox  nor  Unitarian.  We 
go  to  Jesus  of  Nazareth  directly  and  aim  to  live  and  be  made 
like  Him." 

The  Bible  societies,  which  have  done  remarkably  efficient 
work  in  Japan,  report  that  8,000,000  copies  of  the  Bible 
have  been  circulated  among  the  Japanese  during  the  last 
forty  years,  and  that  the  demand  is  still  so  great  that  the 
Bible  is  the  best-selling  book  in  Japan  to-day.  The  transla- 
tions, begun  by  Doctor  Gutzlaff  and  brought  to  a  successful 
conclusion  in  1885  by  Doctors  Hepburn,  Verbeck,  Brown, 
Bettelheim,  and  McCartee,  have  been  characterized  by  com- 
petent linguists  as  "scholarly,  idiomatic,  readable  and 
rhythmic,"  and  have  taken  a  recognized  place  in  the  literary 
as  well  as  the  religious  life  of  Japan. 

The  Young  Men's  Christian  Association  flourishes  in  the 
large  cities  and  in  the  army  and  navy.  The  association  won 
golden  opinions  from  the  governmental  and  military  au- 
thorities during  the  Russia-Japan  War,  and  has  been  in  high 
favor  ever  since.  The  attendance  of  soldiers  at  the  eleven 
Y.  M.  C.  A.  branches  in  Korea  and  Manchuria  aggregated 
a  million  and  a  half  in  eighteen  months.  The  branch  at 
Dairen,  equipped  under  the  guidance  of  that  capable  Chris- 
tian officer,  Colonel  (now  Major-General)  Hibiki,  held  the 
record  for  attendance  until  the  European  War,  in  1914,  the 


PROTESTANT  MISSIONS  IN  JAPAN  639 

daily  number  'of  visiting  soldiers  ranging  from  2,000  to 
6,000.  Prince  Ito  attended  the  dedication  of  the  Y.  M. 
C.  A.  building  in  Seoul,  December  4,  1908,  and  said  in  an 
address:  "It  gives  me  great  pleasure  to  be  with  you  to-day 
on  this  auspicious  occasion.  ...  I  am  sincerely  gratified 
to  see  the  association  installed  in  an  abode  so  well  ap- 
pointed for  its  purposes,  because  I  recognize  in  it  a  most 
potent  instrument  for  the  advancement  of  the  social  and 
moral  well-being  of  this  people.  I  recognize  in  the  associa- 
tion a  friend  and  fellow-worker  in  the  great  cause  of 
national  regeneration,  which  it  is  my  duty  and  pleasure  to 
further  to  the  best  of  my  ability.  I  hardly  need  assure 
you,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  that  the  association  may  always 
count  upon  my  sympathy  and  friendship.  The  Young 
Men's  Christian  Association  of  Seoul  has  the  sincerest 
wishes  of  all  true  friends  of  Korea  for  its  success  and  pros- 
perity." 

The  secular  press  does  not  fail  to  note  the  trend.  An 
editorial  in  The  Japanese  Advertiser,  on  Christmas  Day, 
says:  "There  can  be  no  gainsaying  that  the  Christmas 
season,  quite  apart  from  its  religious  significance,  is  making 
great  headway  in  this  country.  A  walk  through  the  streets 
of  Tokyo  to-day  gives  abundant  evidence  of  the  influence 
of  the  season,  for  all  the  shops  are  stocked  with  goods  that 
are  associated  with  the  foreign  Christmas  quite  as  much  as 
with  the  Japanese  New  Year.  Dotted  throughout  the  city 
are  the  Christian  churches,  each  one  of  which  is  now  en- 
gaged in  celebrating  the  holy  season  with  religious  services, 
as  well  as  sacred  concerts  and  other  entertainments  suitable 
to  the  occasion.  It  must  be  conceded  that  Christianity  is 
making  great  progress  in  a  country  where  its  principal  fes- 
tivals are  coming  to  be  accepted  by  the  mass  of  the  people, 
even  if  that  acceptation  is  only  concerned  with  the  purely 
secular  manifestations  of  the  faith.  It  is  a  great  stride 
forward  compared  with  what  it  was  only  a  few  years  ago, 
when  the  people  were  still  antagonistic  toward  the  religion 
which,  together  with  all  its  associations,  they  regarded 
with  contempt." 


640  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

Striking  is  the  contrast  between  jeering  crowds  trampling 
on  crosses  lying  in  the  dust  a  generation  ago,  and  the  great 
Red  Cross  Government  Hospital  in  Tokyo,  and  the  Japa- 
nese Red  Cross  Society  enrolling  thousands  of  the  most  in- 
fluential men  and  women  of  the  new  Japan  under  the  direct 
patronage  of  the  Empress.  It  is  true  that  the  name  "Red 
Cross"  was  adopted  without  reference  to  the  religious  sig- 
nificance of  the  word  Cross;  but  it  is  significant  that  the 
Japanese  see  no  objection  to-day  to  a  symbol  which  a  former 
generation  despised. 

I  would  not  make  too  much  of  these  facts.  Japan  is  still 
far  from  being  a  Christian  nation.  The  obstacles  yet  to  be 
surmounted  are  numerous  and  some  of  them  are  formidable. 
The  impression  has  gone  abroad  that  the  whole  Japanese 
nation,  having  adopted  many  Western  methods,  has  also 
undergone  a  vital  religious  transformation.  That  such  a 
transformation  has  begun  is  undoubtedly  true.  Evidences 
of  it  are  numerous.  But  the  statement  of  a  committee  of 
missionaries  years  ago  still  holds  that,  while  the  country 
has  in  many  ways  adopted  the  fruits  of  Christian  civiliza- 
tion, it  has  done  so  with  no  large  acceptance  of  Christian 
truth  as  its  basis,  and  that  approximately  80  per  cent  of 
the  population  is  still  destitute  of  a  knowledge  of  the  char- 
acter of  Christianity  which  would  make  intelligent  accep- 
tance possible.  The  bulk  of  the  peasant  class  knows  little 
or  nothing  of  Christianity,  except  in  the  vaguest  way;  and 
many  of  the  educated  classes  value  its  enlightening,  social, 
and  humanitarian  influence  without  a  real  understanding 
of  its  vital  spiritual  power.  Buddhism  and  Shintoism  hav- 
ing long  been  the  national  religions,  it  is  not  surprising  that 
there  are  thirty  times  as  many  Buddhist  and  Shinto  tem- 
ples as  Christian  chapels,  and  two  hundred  times  as  many 
priests  as  Christian  preachers;  but  the  proportions  indi- 
cated testify  to  the  fact  that  the  old  faiths  are  far  from 
moribund. 

Nevertheless,  surveying  the  whole  Christian  movement 
in  Japan,  and  making  all  due  allowance  for  the  many  diffi- 
culties still  existing  and  the  great  work  yet  to  be  done,  the 


PROTESTANT  MISSIONS  IN  JAPAN  641 

broad  fact  remains  that  Christianity  has  made  notable 
headway  in  a  country  to  which  it  came  as  a  faith  alien  to 
the  beliefs  and  customs  of  the  people,  a  faith  brought  by 
foreigners  whose  motives  were  suspected  and  whose  ideas 
and  practices  were  widely  at  variance  with  those  of  the 
Japanese.  A  vigorous  church  has  been  developed,  with 
capable  leadership  and  a  deepening  sense  of  responsibility 
for  the  evangelization  of  the  people  of  Japan.  Christian 
ideas  have  begun  to  permeate  the  literature  and  the  think- 
ing of  the  nation  to  a  greater  extent  than  is  commonly 
realized.  The  Reverend  Doctor  D.  C.  Greene,  of  Tokyo, 
declared,  shortly  before  his  lamented  death,  that  "hardly 
ever  before  in  any  land  has  Christianity  borne  riper  or  more 
varied  fruit  at  so  early  a  stage  in  its  history."  The  tree  is 
comparatively  small,  but  it  is  no  longer  an  exotic  of  uncer- 
tain life.  It  has  struck  its  roots  firmly  into  Japanese  soil 
and  has  showed  that  it  can  and  that  it  will  flourish  there  as 
an  indigenous  growth. 

It  is  regrettable  that  many  of  the  Americans  and  Euro- 
peans who  visit  the  Far  East  do  not  make  more  effort  to 
see  missionary  work.  Most  of  them  spend  their  time  in 
the  shops,  hotels,  and  clubs  of  the  ports  and  capitals,  the 
Buddhist  and  Shinto  temples  and  shrines,  and  a  few  places 
of  scenic  or  historic  interest.  The  professional  guides  whom 
they  employ  know  that  they  have  nothing  to  gain  by  ad- 
vising a  traveller  to  visit  a  mission;  and  if  he  asks  about 
one,  they  are  apt  to  profess  ignorance,  or  to  tell  him  that 
there  is  nothing  worth  seeing  there.  It  is  to  their  financial 
gain  to  pilot  him  to  the  shops,  which  pay  them  a  commis- 
sion on  articles  that  he  can  be  induced  to  buy.  The  busi- 
ness and  professional  residents  in  the  foreign  settlements 
include  men  and  women  of  high  Christian  character;  but 
they  themselves  frankly  lament  that  irreligion  in  these  set- 
tlements is  more  common  than  in  corresponding  circles  in 
American  and  British  cities.  Between  mendacious  guides 
and  irreligious  foreigners,  the  hurried  traveller  is  apt  to  get 
a  poor  opinion  of  missionaries  unless  he  insists  on  seeing 
them  for  himself ,  which,  unfortunately,  he  does  not  always  do. 


642  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

During  Colonel  Alfred  E.  Buck's  incumbency  as  American 
Minister  to  Japan,  a  traveller  asked  his  opinion  of  mission- 
aries, stating  that  he  had  been  a  contributor  to  mission 
work,  but  that  he  had  heard  so  many  criticisms  on  the 
steamer  and  in  the  hotels  that  he  was  inclined  to  discon- 
tinue his  support.  Colonel  Buck  replied  that  he  should 
not  make  such  reports  the  basis  of  judgment;  that  he  him- 
self had  once  doubted  the  value  and  advisability  of  mission- 
ary effort,  but  that  fuller  knowledge  had  led  him  to  revise 
his  opinion,  and  that  he  had  come  to  the  conclusion  that 
the  influence  of  missionaries  had  been  worth  more  to  Japan 
than  all  other  influences  combined.  Another  American  Am- 
bassador to  Japan,  the  Honorable  Luke  E.  Wright  said: 
"When  I  came  to  the  Orient  I  was  disappointed  in  the  mis- 
sionaries— agreeably  disappointed.  I  expected  to  find  them, 
as  in  every  other  calling,  all  sorts  of  men,  with  a  proportion 
of  no-account  ones  who  had  come  out  here  because  they 
could  not  make  a  living  at  home.  But  I  must  confess  that 
I  have  not  met  a  single  missionary  who  could  not  pass 
anywhere.  Both  in  the  Philippines  and  in  Japan  I  have 
met  many  missionaries,  and  a  finer  lot  of  men  I  have  never 
seen  anywhere."  l  These  are  the  disinterested  opinions  of 
men  who  know  the  facts;  and  they  are  corroborated  by 
the  opinions  of  the  eminent  Japanese  that  have  been  cited 
on  preceding  pages. 

1  Cf.  also  the  tribute  of  F.  A.  McKenzie,  correspondent  of  the  London  Daily 
Mail,  in  his  books,  The  Unveiled  East  and  From  Tokyo  to  Tiflis. 


CHAPTER  XXXVIII 
TREND  OF  JAPANESE  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT 

THE  Japanese  type  of  religious  thought  is  definitely 
evangelical  of  a  moderate  or  liberal  trend.  At  first,  indeed, 
the  accepted  creeds  were  conservative.  When  the  Presby- 
terian and  Reformed  missions  formed  the  Church  of  Christ 
in  Japan,  they  did  so  on  the  doctrinal  basis  of  the  home 
churches  which  they  represented,  and  the  infant  organiza- 
tion solemnly  adopted  the  Canons  of  the  Synod  of  Dort, 
the  Heidelberg  Cathechism,  the  Westminster  Confession 
of  Faith,  and  the  Shorter  Catechism.  The  Reverend  K. 
Ibuka,  of  Tokyo,  vainly  protested,  urging  not  only  un- 
suitability  but  that  two  of  these  symbols  had  never  been 
translated  into  the  Japanese  language,  and  were  wholly 
unknown  to  the  Japanese  ministers  and  membership.  But 
it  was  easier  to  use  the  historical  creeds  of  the  churches 
which  maintained  the  co-operating  missions  than  it  was  to 
frame  a  satisfactory  new  creed,  and  Mr.  Ibuka's  motion 
was  defeated.  Time  soon  showed  the  inexpediency  of  at- 
tempting to  force  these  elaborate  symbols  of  the  West  upon 
the  youthful  church  in  the  East.  About  ten  years  after- 
ward, Mr.  Ibuka's  motion  was  revived  and  carried,  and 
short  and  simple  articles,  based  on  the  Apostles'  Creed, 
were  adopted,  with  a  preamble  adapting  it  to  Japanese 
needs.  In  1912  the  Christian  Literature  Society  of  Japan 
issued  a  "Statement  of  the  Christian  Faith  and  Life,  A 
Message  to  the  Japanese  Churches,"  which  had  been  pre- 
viously submitted  to  seven  hundred  missionaries  of  the 
various  communions  represented  in  Japan.  It  was  issued, 
not  as  a  complete  presentation  of  the  Christian  faith  and 
life,  but  "to  acquaint  the  Japanese  with  the  salient  features 
of  Christian  teaching."  One  who  wishes  to  know  the  sub- 
stance of  the  missionary  teaching  in  Japan  on  the  vital 

643 


644  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

points  of  theology  and  life  will  be  deeply  interested  in  this 
remarkable  document. 

It  might  be  supposed  that  the  martial  spirit  of  the  Japa- 
nese and  their  strict  ideas  of  organization  and  discipline 
would  incline  them  to  a  rigid  type  of  religious  thinking  and 
procedure;  but  their  national  tendency  in  this  direction  is 
modified  by  the  equally  strong  Japanese  disposition  to 
scrutinize  everything  of  foreign  origin,  and  to  adopt  only 
so  much  as  they  deem  adapted  to  their  use.  Their  selec- 
tion in  doctrinal  matters  is  influenced  by  the  further  fact, 
to  which  I  have  referred  elsewhere,  that  they  had  not 
been  accustomed  to  conceive  of  a  Supreme  Being  in  terms 
of  personality.  Some  of  the  tenets  of  Christianity,  there- 
fore, appeared  to  them  to  be  irrational.  The  fatherhood 
and  love  of  God,  so  precious  to  us  of  the  West,  required  a 
great  deal  of  explanation  before  they  became  intelligible  to 
the  Japanese.  The  parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son  did  not 
suggest  to  them  what  it  instantly  does  to  an  American  audi- 
ence, because  they  had  never  thought  of  God  as  a  father, 
or  of  man  as  his  child.  Nor  is  it  altogether  easy  to  explain 
some  other  Christian  truths  and  biblical  accounts.  The 
Twenty-third  Psalm  and  the  parable  of  the  Good  Shepherd 
conveyed  very  little  of  their  rich  meaning  to  people  who  had 
never  seen  a  sheep.  Only  recently  a  scholarly  missionary, 
who  has  undertaken  to  prepare  a  series  of  articles  on  Chris- 
tianity for  the  vernacular  press,  wrote:  "One  has  to  write 
in  a  very  elementary  fashion  when  one  seeks  to  interest 
those  who  have  alsolutely  no  knowledge  of  Christian  teach- 
ing. Many  things  most  simple  to  us  must  then  be  ex- 
plained, and  it  is  often  most  difficult  to  find  an  explanation 
which  makes  the  matter  clear,  and  avoids  making  it  gro- 
tesque. For  example,  to  tell  the  story  of  the  Annunciation 
and  of  the  shepherds,  one  must  explain  what  angels  are; 
and  to  do  that  so  as  to  seem  reasonable  and  not  silly  is 
harder  than  you  would  think.  In  the  case  of  the  Tempta- 
tion, I  found  these  difficulties  so  great  that  I  left  it  out 
altogether — as  Mark  did !  To  be  sure,  he  mentions  it,  but 
he  does  not  relate  it." 


The  Japanese  churches  now  include  a  considerable  num- 
ber of  Christians  who  have  passed  beyond  the  stage  re- 
ferred to  in  the  preceding  paragraph,  but  the  difficulties 
described  are  still  encountered  by  evangelists  who  address 
the  comparatively  untouched  masses.  Even  among  the 
Christians  themselves,  especially  those  of  the  first  genera- 
tion of  believers,  the  heritage  of  centuries  of  non-Christian 
beliefs  often  creates  certain  rather  definite  presuppositions 
that  are  apt  to  affect  the  interpretation  of  the  Bible.  The 
persistence  of  pre-Christian  ideas  in  Christian  churches, 
and  their  effect  upon  faith  and  practice  is  a  subject  to  which 
I  have  adverted  in  another  volume,1  and  which  has  received 
remarkably  suggestive  treatment  by  Professor  Joh.  War- 
neck.2 

The  Japanese  Christians  propose  to  think  through  the 
problems  of  theology  for  themselves.  Western  creeds  are 
not  blindly  accepted.  One  of  their  ablest  men,  the  Reverend 
Doctor  M.  Uemura,  of  Tokyo,  has  plainly  written:  "In 
the  realm  of  religious  thought,  is  it  not  shameful  to  accept 
opinions  ready-made,  relying  on  the  experiences  of  others 
instead  of  one's  own?  ...  Is  it  not  a  great  duty  that  we 
owe  to  God  and  to  mankind  to  develop  the  religious  talent 
of  our  people,  and  to  contribute  our  share  to  the  religious 
ideas  of  the  world?"  This  is  a  healthy  intellectual  and 
spiritual  sentiment,  and  it  may  result  hi  time  in  a  re- 
statement of  theology  in  terms  of  Japanese  thought.  We 
should  welcome  this  rather  than  deprecate  it.  We  have 
done  the  same  thing  for  ourselves  and,  we  believe,  to  the 
enlargement  and  enrichment  of  common  Christianity.  Per- 
haps the  Japanese  will  make  quite  as  valuable  an  addition 
to  the  world's  faith.  The  probability  that  some  changes 
will  be  made  (whether  good,  bad,  or  indifferent,  time  will 
show)  is  heightened  by  the  fact  that  many  of  the  leaders 
of  the  Japanese  churches  have  been  largely  influenced  by 
the  inquiring  spirit  of  modern  scientific  and  philosophical 

1  Rising  Churches  in  Non-Christian  Lands,  pp.  53  seq. 
1  Article,  "Vestiges  of  Heathenism  Within  the  Church  in  the  Mission  Field," 
International  Review  of  Missions,  October,  1914. 


646  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

methods,  either  in  European  or  American  colleges  and  uni- 
versities OP  in  Japanese  institutions  which  have  accepted 
those  methods.  Some  years  ago  the  tendency  appeared  to 
be  toward  Unitarianism.  Since  then,  the  current  has 
swung  back  to  definitely  evangelical  channels.  A  well- 
known  missionary  of  the  conservative  school  expresses  the 
opinion  that  the  Japanese  Christian  leaders  "are  doctri- 
nally  sound.  This  does  not  mean  that  they  all  stand  for  the 
old-line  orthodoxy,  especially  with  respect  to  the  inspiration 
of  the  Scriptures.  To  a  very  considerable  extent  they  ex- 
press themselves  in  terms  of  the  'assured  results  of  Higher 
Criticism,'  of  what  one  may  call  the  modern  type.  In 
spite  of  some  things  here  and  there  that  men  like  myself 
deplore,  however,  we  find  ourselves  obliged  in  fairness  to 
admit  that  the  trend  of  the  past  decade  has  been  toward 
a  positive  stand  and  a  sound  stand  on  the  great  funda- 
mentals of  the  faith."  Another  missionary  writes:  "We 
sometimes  say  hard  things  about  the  ministry  of  the  Japa- 
nese Church,  but  it  is  not  about  their  doctrines  or  prin- 
ciples. They  are  nearly  as  well  grounded  in  the  doctrines 
and  principles  of  Christianity  as  the  ministry  of  the  Protes- 
tant Churches  of  America  and  England.  The  difficulty  is 
that  these  doctrines  and  principles  have  not  yet  had  time 
to  work  themselves  out  into  consistent  and  steady  prac- 
tice, and  there  are  constant  outcroppings  in  practice  of 
pagan  pride  and  injustice.  There  is  much  Judaism  and 
heathenism  left  in  us  Western  Christians.  Why  should 
there  not  be  still  more  of  Buddhist  and  Confucian  thorn- 
life  left  in  the  first  generation  of  Christians  of  Japan?" 

The  problem  of  the  relation  of  the  foreign  mission  to  the 
native  church,  which  in  most  lands  is  still  in  its  early  or 
middle  stages,  has  in  Japan  become  acute.  It  is  not  a 
purely  religious  problem;  it  is  fundamentally  a  part  of 
the  question  which  affects  many  political  and  commercial 
relationships.  When  foreigners  develop  any  enterprise  in 
Japan,  shall  they  or  the  Japanese  control  it?  Japan  has 
vigorous  churches.  Their  governing  bodies  are  composed 
in  some  cases  wholly,  and  in  others  very  largely,  of  Japanese. 


TREND  OF  JAPANESE  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT     647 

Independence  of  missionary  control  has  reached  its  most 
complete  stage  in  the  Kumiai  (Congregational)  Churches. 
Congregational  ministers  in  America  are  members  of  local 
churches,  but  not  in  Japan ;  nor  are  they  eligible  to  member- 
ship in  the  National  Council.  The  Methodist  Episcopal 
Church  is  organized  into  conferences  presided  over  by  a 
Japanese  bishop,  and  The  Church  of  Christ,  formed  in  1877 
by  the  six  Presbyterian  and  Reformed  Missions,  has  seven 
Presbyteries  which  are  united  in  a  Japanese  Synod.  All 
of  the  seven  bishops  of  the  Anglican  communion,  represent- 
ing a  union  of  the  Church  of  England  and  the  Protestant 
Episcopal  Church  of  the  United  States,  are  still  foreigners; 
but  the  Japanese  clergy  preponderate  in  the  diocesan  con- 
ventions, and  the  demand  for  Japanese  bishops  is  becoming 
more  insistent. 

A  large  proportion  of  the  churches  are  self-supporting. 
The  Church  of  Christ  will  not  organize  a  congregation  as  a 
church  unless  it  is  wholly  self-sustaining,  including  the 
pastor's  salary;  and  if  a  church  after  being  organized 
ceases  to  be  self-supporting,  it  loses  its  status  and  its  right 
to  have  a  voting  representative  in  Presbytery.  The  pas- 
tors of  the  self-supporting  churches  have  greater  prestige 
than  their  brethren  who  serve  other  congregations,  and 
they  alone  have  the  power  to  vote  in  the  presbyteries  and  to 
represent  them  in  the  joint  committees  of  Japanese  and 
missionaries  in  the  supervision  of  evangelistic  work.  Doctor 
M.  Uemura  declares  that  "apart  from  Christ  and  the  Spirit, 
Japanese  Christianity  has  no  need  to  rely  on  any  one  what- 
ever. Sufficient  unto  itself,  resolved  to  stand  alone,  it  must 
advance  along  the  whole  line  toward  the  realization  of  this 
ideal.  ...  To  depend  upon  the  pockets  of  foreigners  for 
money  to  pay  the  bills  is  not  a  situation  which  ought  to 
satisfy  the  moral  sense  of  Japanese  Christians." 

The  policy  of  the  Roman  and  Greek  Catholic  Churches 
lodges  final  power  in  the  authorities  at  Rome  and  Petro- 
grad,  respectively,  and  all  bishops  are  appointed  by  and 
are  amenable  to  them.  Practically,  however,  the  local 
bishops  exercise  wide  discretion  in  the  management  of  their 


648  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

own  work.  That  the  national  spirit  of  independence  ex- 
ists among  their  Japanese  clergy  and  laity  may  be  inferred 
from  the  fact  that  July  13,  1909,  forty  delegates  of  the  Rus- 
sian Greek  Church,  assembled  in  Tokyo,  passed  a  resolution 
to  the  effect  that  the  maintenance  of  the  Japan  Orthodox 
Church  should  be  placed  in  the  hands  of  the  Japanese  be- 
lievers as  soon  as  possible;  that,  since  the  whole  expenses 
of  the  church  are  met  with  money  obtained  from  the  Holy 
Synod,  or  supplied  by  the  Russian  Government,  the  pastors 
of  the  church  are  in  the  position  of  being  salaried  officials 
of  the  Russian  Government,  a  position  unbecoming  for 
Japanese. 

Japanese  ecclesiastical  bodies  of  all  types  insist  upon  a 
decisive  voice  in  the  control  of  their  religious  work.  This  is 
partly  because  of  the  temperament  of  the  Japanese,  who 
are  the  most  self-reliant,  ambitious,  and  aggressive  of  all 
non-Christian  peoples;  and  partly  because  of  the  fact  that 
the  converts  in  Japan  have  not  come  so  generally  from  the 
lower  classes  as  in  most  other  countries,  but  from  the 
middle  and  higher  middle  class,  which  has  produced  the 
leaders  of  modern  Japan  in  education,  commerce,  politics, 
and  the  army  and  navy.  This  predominance  of  exception- 
ally strong  men,  together  with  the  national  spirit  of  pride 
and  self-reliance,  naturally  resulted  in  the  development  of  a 
spirit  of  independence  in  the  church  earlier  than  in  other 
lands.  The  Japanese  are  not  inclined  to  follow  the  leader- 
ship of  foreigners  in  religion  any  more  than  in  politics  and 
business. 

The  missionaries  therefore  found  themselves  confronted 
by  the  alternatives  of  organizing  separate  churches,  or  of 
withdrawing  from  the  country,  or  of  accepting  co-operation 
with  the  Japanese  churches  on  such  terms  as  the  latter 
might  prescribe.  The  first  alternative  was  manifestly  im- 
practicable, except  as  a  temporary  makeshift.  A  Japanese 
church  controlled  by  foreigners  and  accepting  their  leader- 
ship and  money,  side  by  side  with  an  independent  Japanese 
church  struggling  to  make  its  own  way,  would  command 
no  respect,  and  could  have  no  future. 


TREND  OF  JAPANESE  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT     649 

The  second  alternative  might  appear  to  be  a  natural 
corollary  from  the  aim  of  the  missionary  enterprise.  Since 
that  aim  is  to  found  the  church,  it  might  be  considered 
achieved  when  the  church  is  started.  The  objections  to 
withdrawal  from  Japan,  however,  are  decisive.  After 
making  the  most  generous  allowance  for  that  part  of  the 
population  that  is  being  influenced  by  Christian  ideas, 
there  remain  vast  sections  that  are  almost  wholly  un- 
touched. It  is  a  great  thing  that  within  a  little  more  than 
half  a  century  after  the  establishment  of  Protestant  mis- 
sions there  are  nearly  a  hundred  thousand  communicants 
in  Japan;  that  Roman  and  Greek  Catholics  enlarge  the 
total  to  a  quarter  of  a  million;  and  that  the  progressive  life 
of  the  nation  is  feeling  the  influence  of  Christianity  in  the 
varied  ways  that  have  been  described  in  a  former  chapter. 
But  there  are  57,000,000  people  in  Japan.  The  churches, 
with  all  their  intelligence  and  activity,  are  still  too  small 
and  weak  to  handle  unaided  the  tremendous  problems  of 
evangelization  and  Christian  education.  They  will  un- 
doubtedly do  so  in  time.  I  have  such  faith  in  the  future 
of  Christianity  in  Japan  that,  if  missionaries  were  to  be 
withdrawn  entirely,  I  believe  that  Christianity  would  sur- 
vive and  ultimately  spread  throughout  the  Empire.  But 
we  should  not  acquiesce  in  a  policy  which  might  defer  the 
evangelization  of  Japan  for  centuries,  when  we  are  able  to 
assist  in  having  it  accomplished  within  a  shorter  period. 

The  opinion  of  the  Japanese  Christian  leaders  on  this 
subject  is  conclusive.  They  do  not  want  the  missions  to 
withdraw.  When  the  late  Bishop  Honda,  of  the  Methodist 
Episcopal  Church,  was  asked  by  the  Canadian  Methodist 
Mission  for  his  judgment  as  to  the  advisability  of  an  ex- 
tensive evangelistic  work  by  the  mission  or,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  gradual  withdrawal  of  the  mission  force,  he  re- 
plied: "From  the  depth  of  my  heart  I  request  you  to  go  on. 
.  .  .  The  united  new  church  is  struggling  for  self-support 
and  has  not  power  to  advance;  so  it  is  absolutely  necessary 
to  have  the  missionaries  work  for  the  unevangelized  places." 
The  leaders  of  The  Church  of  Christ  told  me  that  the  pres- 


650  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

ent  foreign  force  is  too  small,  and  that  more  men  and 
money  are  urgently  needed,  particularly  for  the  educa- 
tional and  literary  work  which  the  Japanese  Christians  are 
not  yet  able  to  do  on  an  adequate  scale.  Of  the  Kumiai 
churches,  their  secretary,  the  Reverend  T.  Makino,  wrote 
in  the  Japan  Christian  World:  "For  years  we  raised  our 
voices  for  the  independence  of  our  churches.  Now,  inde- 
pendence being  an  accomplished  fact,  we  are  up  against 
another  problem.  It  is  the  need  of  that  hand-in-hand 
effort  that  goes  with  the  expansion  of  evangelistic  effort. 
.  .  .  The  day  has  passed  for  us  to  regard  them  (mission- 
aries) as  strangers.  It  is  now  the  time  for  us  to  work  in 
full  fellowship  with  them  in  spiritual  warfare.  We  earnestly 
hope  that  the  American  Board  will  appreciate  the  oppor- 
tunity and  will  greatly  increase  their  forces." 

The  third  alternative,  co-operation,  appears  to  be  an 
easy  solution  of  the  problem  of  relationship  with  a  self- 
governing  church.  But  what  is  meant  by  co-operation? 
Some  explain  it  one  way,  some  another.  The  Synod  of 
The  Church  of  Christ,  in  1906,  declared  what  it  meant  by 
the  following  action:  "A  co-operating  mission  is  one  which 
recognizes  the  right  of  The  Church  of  Christ  in  Japan  to 
the  general  control  of  all  evangelistic  work  done  by  the 
mission  as  a  mission  within  the  church,  or  in  connection 
with  it,  and  which  carries  on  such  work  under  an  arrange- 
ment based  upon  the  foregoing  principle,  and  concurred  in 
by  the  Synod,  acting  through  the  Board  of  Missions."  The 
following  year,  the  Synod  emphasized  its  position  by  voting 
that  "all  local  churches  receiving  aid  from  missions  which 
by  September  30,  1908,  should  fail  to  co-operate  by  defini- 
tion, should  be  totally  disconnected  from  The  Church  of 
Christ  in  Japan." 

Missionaries  of  some  other  communions,  like  the  Protes- 
tant Episcopal  and  Methodist  Episcopal,  have  not  experi- 
enced the  precise  form  of  difficulty  that  for  a  time  confronted 
the  missions  of  the  Presbyterian  and  Reformed  churches, 
as  their  methods  of  organization  are  somewhat  different. 
But  the  fundamental  fact  affects  them  all,  namely,  that 


TREND  OF  JAPANESE  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT     651 

missionaries  in  Japan  cannot  successfully  separate  their 
work  from  the  Japanese  churches,  or  wisely  withdraw  from 
the  country,  but  must  remain  and  work  in  some  form  of 
direct  and  sympathetic  co-operation  with  them.  This  is 
what  they  are  very  cordially  doing.  They  respect  their 
Japanese  brethren,  and  are  working  happily  with  them. 
They  do  not  believe  that  a  missionary  anywhere  in  the 
world  makes  a  mistake  when  he  trusts  his  native  associates 
and  co-operates  ungrudgingly  with  them.  If  they  wish  to 
do  some  things  that  he  does  not  approve,  it  may  not  fol- 
low that  they  are  wrong.  At  any  rate,  they  are  in  their 
own  country,  and  are  dealing  with  affairs  that  are  more 
vital  to  them  than  to  any  one  else.  The  missionary  is  not 
in  Japan  for  himself,  but  for  the  Japanese.  His  aim  is  to 
establish  the  church;  and  that  church  when  established 
does  not  exist  in  the  interest  of  the  missions,  but  the  mis- 
sions exist  in  the  interest  of  the  church,  which  is  expected 
in  due  time  to  assume  responsibility  for  the  work  that  is 
developed. 

I  look  upon  the  growing  power  and  independence  of  the 
churches  in  Japan,  not  indeed  without  some  anxiety,  and 
yet,  on  the  whole,  with  large  gratification.  They  have 
made  mistakes,  and  doubtless  they  will  make  more.  The 
churches  in  New  Testament  times  made  them,  and  so  have 
the  modern  churches  in  Europe  and  America.  The  Asiatic 
churches  may  promulgate  some  doctrines  and  interpreta- 
tions of  the  Bible  that  we  regard  as  unsound;  but  are 
Western  churches  so  uniformly  free  from  error  that  we  are 
willing  to  make  them  patterns  for  the  churches  in  the  mis- 
sion field  ?  When  we  think  of  all  the  vagaries  and  heresies 
that  thrive  like  weeds  in  the  Western  mind,  we  may  feel 
that  perhaps  it  is  just  as  well  that  the  churches  in  the  Far 
East  should  be  autonomous,  so  that  they  will  be  free  to 
accept  the  good  and  to  reject  the  bad.1 

1  For  a  further  discussion  of  the  relation  of  Western  theological  and  eccle- 
siastical forms  to  the  churches  in  Asia,  and  the  pressing  question  of  church 
union,  see  the  author's  volumes  on  The  Foreign  Missionary,  Unity  and  Mis- 
sions, and  Rising  Churches  in  Non-Christian  Lands. 


CHAPTER  XXXIX 
JAPANESE  TESTIMONY  TO  JAPAN'S  URGENT  NEED 

No  one  can  study  Japan  and  the  Japanese  with  an  open 
mind  without  becoming  conscious  of  deepened  interest  and 
friendliness  of  feeling.  Irritating  as  some  of  their  methods 
are,  trying  as  it  is  for  the  race-proud  Anglo-Saxon  to  feel 
that  at  last  he  has  met  a  competitor  that  he  cannot  easily 
overcome,  these  things  increase  rather  than  diminish  one's 
interest.  It  is  to  the  credit  of  the  Japanese  that  they  are 
able,  united,  ambitious,  and  aggressive.  I  do  not  extenuate 
their  faults  any  more  than  I  extenuate  those  of  my  own 
countrymen;  but  I  am  eager  to  see  the  Japanese  united 
with  the  best  people  of  Europe  and  America  in  the  effort 
to  promote  righteousness  throughout  the  earth.  Forces 
and  temptations  in  America,  which  numerous  and  powerful 
Christian  churches  help  us  to  fight,  are  surging  into  a  coun- 
try where  the  opposing  -forces  of  righteousness  are  still 
comparatively  new  and  small. 

An  influential  Japanese  journal  editorially  warns  its 
readers  of  the  resultant  danger:  "Japan  is  now  joyfully 
riding  on  the  wave  of  prosperity,"  it  declares.  "Gold  is 
flowing  in  and  many  a  man  has  amassed  a  fortune  which  he 
never  dreamt  of  before.  It  is  a  question,  however,  whether 
this  abnormal  growth  in  wealth  is  an  unalloyed  blessing. 
A  nation  on  which  wealth  has  been  unexpectedly  thrust 
will  degenerate  unless  it  is  morally  strong  enough  to  bear 
it.  Japan  now  stands  at  the  crossways  of  rise  and  decline. 
If,  on  account  of  the  great  wealth  she  has  been  given,  she 
becomes  swell-headed,  extravagant;  and  effeminate,  she  is 
doomed.  Morally  this  is  really  a  critical  time  for  her,  and 
it  is  a  time  when  her  statesmen,  educationists,  and  religion- 
ists must  exert  themselves  to  the  utmost  to  warn  the  people 
against  the  danger  looming  ahead,  restrain  them  from  giving 

652 


653 

themselves  up  to  a  life  of  careless  luxury,  and  show  them  the 
right  way  to  pursue." 

The  peril  of  the  situation  is  intensified  by  the  fact  that 
the  old  religions  of  Japan  are  losing  their  hold,  particularly 
upon  the  educated  classes.  Mr.  Galen  W.  Fisher,  Secretary 
of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  in  Tokyo,  says  that  a  census  of  409  stu- 
dents in  three  schools  showed  that  only  21  acknowledged 
any  faith;  and  that  of  these,  15  were  Buddhists,  1  was 
a  Confucian,  1  a  Shintoist,  and  4  were  Christians.  The 
flower  of  Japan's  youth  are  the  students  of  the  government 
universities.  The  young  men  in  the  Imperial  University 
in  Tokyo  were  asked  to  indicate  their  religions.  The  re- 
sponses were  as  follows:  Buddhists,  50;  Christians,  60; 
atheists,  1,500;  agnostics,  3,000.  In  other  words,  out  of 
4,610  young  men  who  will  be  among  the  most  influential 
men  of  the  future,  4,500  had  discarded  the  national  religious 
faiths  and  become  atheists  or  agnostics.  What  will  it  mean 
to  the  world  if  these  proportions  are  to  continue,  and  the 
Far  East  is  to  develop  under  the  leadership  of  a  nation  that 
has  no  religious  faith?  No  wonder  that  Baron  Makino, 
Minister  of  Education,  a  few  years  ago  said :  "We  are  greatly 
distressed  about  the  moral  condition  of  the  students,  and 
the  low  character  of  the  ordinary  lodging-houses  where 
young  men  live." 

Mr.  Masujiro  Honda  says  of  the  conference  of  represen- 
tatives of  Buddhist,  Shinto  and  Christian  religions  in  1912: 
"It  was,  on  the  one  hand,  a  frank  admission  on  the  part 
of  government  officials  and  Elder  Statesmen  of  their  power- 
lessness  to  cope  with  the  alarming  situation  that  the  trend 
of  events  presented  before  their  anxious  eyes,  and  on  the 
other  hand  it  was  a  rebuke  administered  to  the  spiritual 
powers  that  be  for  their  lack  of  zeal.  .  .  .  The  leading  in- 
tellects and  financiers  who  organized  it  have  been  com- 
pelled to  recognize  the  urgent  and  imperative  need  of  a 
religion  as  the  true  basis  of  a  moral  and  material  regenera- 
tion of  their  countrymen." 

A  society  for  the  study  of  religions  has  been  formed 
among  the  professors  of  the  Imperial  University  in  Tokyo. 


654  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

This  does  not  imply  that  the  members  are  disposed  to  be- 
come Christians,  but  it  does  signify  that  some  of  the  ablest 
men  in  that  faculty  of  able  and  scholarly  men  are  not  satis- 
fied with  an  agnostic  or  atheistic  interpretation  of  life,  and 
that  they  regard  religion  as  a  force  that  should  have  care- 
ful and  intelligent  study.  It  is  significant,  too,  that  in 
1916  the  university  accepted  a  gift  of  200,000  yen  from 
Baron  Morimura,  a  well-known  Christian,  to  establish  a 
chair  of  Christianity  in  the  university. 

In  my  conversations  with  prominent  Japanese  during 
my  two  visits  to  Japan,  I  was  accustomed  to  bring  in  the 
query:  "What  do  you  regard  as  the  chief  need  of  modern 
Japan?"  After  collating  the  answers  at  the  end  of  my 
tours,  I  found  that  the  consensus  of  opinion  was  that  Japan's 
most  urgent  need  is  a  new  basis  of  morals;  that  the  nation 
has  broken  loose  from  its  old  religious  moorings  and  has 
not  yet  made  new  ones. 

The  lesson  should  be  taken  to  heart  in  Occidental  as  well 
as  Oriental  lands.  We  of  the  West  know  that  Christ  is  a 
cleansing  and  stabilizing  force  in  national  life,  and  we 
ought  to  be  profoundly  concerned  that  the  Japanese  should 
have  Christ  to  help  them.  We  want  to  see  Christian  mis- 
sions in  Japan  strengthened,  not  because  we  regard  the 
Japanese  as  inferiors,  not  because  we  deserve  any  credit  for 
the  knowledge  of  God  which  was  brought  to  us  as  to  them 
from  the  outside,  but  because  we  count  the  Japanese  as 
brethren  who  need  the  same  Christ  that  we  need.  Lord 
Balfour,  of  the  British  Parliament,  has  well  said  that  "the 
great  lesson  impressed  upon  us  by  our  representatives  from 
whatever  race  they  come,  and  in  whatever  field  they  work, 
is  that  it  is  perilous  to  give  the  benefits  of  civilization  with 
its  accompanying  .temptations,  without  making  an  earnest 
effort  to  strengthen  moral  and  spiritual  forces.  ...  It  is 
the  duty  of  Christian  nations  to  make  as  the  first  aim  of 
then*  policy  the  good  of  the  races  with  whom  they  are 
brought  in  contact.  The  desire  for  then*  own  advantage 
is  no  excuse  for  departure  on  their  part  from  this  sound 
principle." 


TESTIMONY  TO  JAPAN'S  URGENT  NEED        655 

We  of  the  West  have  given  the  Japanese  our  weapons 
to  increase  their  military  efficiency,  our  inventions  and  dis- 
coveries to  increase  their  manufacturing  and  commercial 
efficiency,  our  educational  and  scientific  methods  to  increase 
their  intellectual  efficiency,  our  medical  and  surgical  equip- 
ment to  increase  their  ability  to  treat  disease;  are  we  not 
under  equal  obligation,  to  say  the  least,  to  give  them  the 
gospel  that  will  increase  their  spiritual  efficiency  and  enable 
them  to  make  right  use  of  all  their  other  powers? 

The  Japanese  already  have  a  political  vision.  They 
covet  the  leadership  of  Asia,  and  they  are  preparing  for  it 
with  a  skill  and  energy  which  elicit  the  wonder  of  man- 
kind. They  already  have  a  commercial  vision,  and  they 
are  strenuously  trying  to  realize  it.  They  already  have  an 
intellectual  vision,  and  they  have  built  up  one  of  the  best 
educational  systems  in  the  world.  What  Japan  now  needs 
is  a  spiritual  vision  which  will  purify  and  glorify  these  other 
visions. 

This  vision  of  Christ  is  vital  to  the  future  of  Japan  and 
of  the  Far  East.  Few  foreigners  have  been  so  deeply  in 
sympathy  with  the  Japanese  as  the  late  Lafcadio  Hearn; 
but  in  his  chapter  on  "The  Genius  of  Japanese  Civiliza- 
tion" he  wrote:  "The  psychologist  knows  that  the  so- 
called  adoption  of  Western  civilization  within  a  time  of 
thirty  years  cannot  mean  the  addition  to  the  Japanese 
brain  of  any  organs  or  power  previously  absent  from  it. 
He  knows  that  it  cannot  mean  any  sudden  change  in  the 
mental  or  moral  character  of  the  race.  Such  changes  are 
not  made  in  a  generation.  Transmitted  civilization  works 
much  more  slowly,  requiring  even  hundreds  of  years  to 
produce  certain  permanent  psychological  results.  ...  It 
is  quite  evident  that  the  mental  readjustments,  effected  at 
a  cost  which  remains  to  be  told,  have  given  good  results 
only  along  directions  in  which  the  race  has  shown  capaci- 
ties of  special  kinds.  .  .  .  Nothing  remarkable  has  been 
done,  however,  hi  directions  foreign  to  the  national  genius. 
...  To  imagine  that  the  emotional  character  of  an 
Oriental  race  could  be  transformed  in  the  short  space  of 


656  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

thirty  years  by  the  contact  of  Occidental  ideas  is  absurd. 
...  All  that  Japan  has  been  able  to  do  so  miraculously 
well  has  been  done  without  any  self-transformation,  and 
those  who  imagine  her  emotionally  closer  to  us  to-day  than 
she  may  have  been  thirty  years  ago,  ignore  the  facts  of 
science  which  admit  of  no  argument."  l  The  Japanese 
mind  has  long  been  adapted  to  war,  to  politics,  and  to  cer- 
tain kinds  of  industrial  and  scientific  efficiency.  Knowledge 
of  Western  methods  and  discoveries  has  simply  enabled  the 
Japanese  to  do  more  effectively  and  on  a  larger  scale  what 
they  had  been  doing  after  a  fashion  before.  The  spiritual 
realm,  however,  is  a  comparatively  new  world  to  them. 
Shintoism  and  Buddhism  have  not  known,  and  therefore 
could  not  make  known,  a  personal  God. 

In  his  instructive  book,  The  Future  of  Japan,  W.  Petrie 
Watson  declares  that  religion,  conceived  as  God  and  as  a 
final  and  sufficient  explanation  of  all  phenomena,  is  not  a 
Japanese  notion,  and  that  of  religion  as  it  is  conceived  in 
Europe  there  is  little  or  none  in  Japan.  The  Japanese  re- 
gard religion  as  subordinate  in  life,  and  the  temper  of  their 
mind  is  such  that  it  is  usually  difficult  for  them  to  acquire 
a  just  view  of  its  authority  and  indispensableness  in  indi- 
vidual and  national  existence.  His  conclusion  is  that  Japan 
is  addressing  herself  to  the  great  responsibilities  of  the 
modern  world  without  any  religion  at  all,  in  the  proper 
sense  of  the  term;  and  that  the  effort  is  pathetic  and  dis- 
appointing rather  than  heroic  and  inspiring,  since  there  is 
no  fresh  beginning  of  history  which  has  not  been  born  from 
a  new  religion  or  from  the  new  interpretation  of  an  existing 
religion.  He  admires  the  administrative  efficiency  with 
which  Japan  is  doing  her  work  at  present,  and  the  splendid 
enthusiasm  which  she  is  bringing  to  her  present  tasks;  but 
even  savages  are  often  recklessly  brave  and  eagerly  willing 
to  die  for  their  leader.  There  is  therefore  reason  for  pro- 
found anxiety  as  we  study  the  relations  which  Japan  has 
formed  with  the  modern  world,  and  the  power  that  she  is 
exerting.  Only  as  the  Japanese  grasp  Christ's  ideals  of 

» Kokoro,  pp.  1&-18. 


TESTIMONY  TO  JAPAN'S  URGENT  NEED         657 

life  and  build  upon  the  solid  foundation  of  Christ's  teachings 
will  they  be  able  to  maintain  themselves  as  a  great  Power. 
The  Japanese  must  be  brought  within  view  of  the  necessity 
of  a  religious  interpretation  of  life,  ampler,  clearer,  and 
more  categorical  than  that  which  they  have  found  or  can 
find  either  in  a  religion  of  loyalty,  or  in  Bushido,  or  in 
esoteric  Buddhism,  or  in  superstitious  Shintoism.  Japan 
can  not  hope  to  reap  the  results  of  the  religion  of  Europe 
without  an  ultimate  reckoning  with  their  cause.1 

Thoughtful  Japanese  have  begun  to  see  this,  and  to  see 
also  that  Christianity  offers  the  regenerative  principle  that 
Japan  needs.  Let  their  own  authoritative  testimony  be 
cited  rather  than  that  of  a  foreigner: 

Marquis  Okuma,  former  Prime  Minister:  "The  Japa- 
nese have  made  great  progress  along  material  lines.  It  is 
only  sixty  years  since  we  were  a  feudal  nation.  We  have 
done  in  that  time  what  some  nations  have  taken  five  cen- 
turies to  accomplish.  But  our  real  development  has  been 
chiefly  along  the  material  side.  We  still  have  the  moral 
and  spiritual  faults  of  a  feudal  civilization,  even,  in  some 
cases,  augmented  by  contact  with  the  faults  of  the  most 
modern  capitals.  .  .  .  Our  mental  and  moral  development 
has  not  kept  pace  with  our  material  progress.  .  .  .  There 
is  not  a  single  moral  standard  to  which  the  people  can  ad- 
here. Japan  is  athirst  for  moral  and  religious  guidance.  .  .  . 
The  origin  of  modern  civilization  is  to  be  found  in  the  teach- 
ing of  the  Sage  of  Judea,  by  whom  alone  the  necessary 
moral  dynamic  is  supplied.  .  .  .  No  practical  solution  of 
many  pressing  problems  is  in  sight  apart  from  Christi- 
anity." 

Baron  Mayejima,  former  member  of  the  Imperial  Cab- 
inet: "I  firmly  believe  we  must  have  religion  as  the  basis 
of  our  national  and  personal  welfare.  No  matter  how  large 
an  army  and  navy  we  may  have,  unless  we  have  righteous- 
ness as  the  foundation  of  our  national  existence,  we  shall 
fall  short  of  success.  And  when  I  look  about  me  to  see 
what  religion  we  may  best  rely  upon,  I  am  convinced  that 

1  The  Future  of  Japan,  cf.  especially  chaps.  XIV,  XXVIII,  and  XXX. 


658  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

the  religion  of  Christ  is  the  one  most  full  of  strength  and 
promise  for  the  nation." 

Baron  Kanda,  Head  of  the  Higher  Commercial  School 
hi  Tokyo:  "Let  me  pay  a  humble  tribute  to  that  noble 
band  of  American  missionaries  and  teachers  who  have  con- 
secrated their  lives  to  the  cause  of  moral  and  intellectual 
elevation  of  our  people,  .  .  .  the  lasting  influence  of  whose 
labors  it  is  impossible  to  overestimate.  And  I  am  glad  to 
say  that  this  noble  band  is  constantly  recruited  and  is 
ever  swelling,  whose  influence  is  deeply  stamped  upon  the 
rising  generation,  and  will  be  felt  indirectly  through  genera- 
tions to  come." 

Baron  Shibusawa,  chairman  of  the  commission  of  rep- 
resentative business  men  of  Japan  which  visited  the  United 
States  a  few  years  ago:  "Japan  hi  the  future  must  base 
her  morality  on  religion.  It  must  be  a  religion  that  does 
not  rest  on  an  empty  or  superstitious  faith,  like  that  of  some 
of  the  Buddhist  sects  in  our  land,  but  must  be  like  the  one 
that  prevails  in  your  own  country,  which  manifests  its 
power  over  men  by  filling  them  with  good  works." 

Prince  Ito,  former  Prime  Minister,  early  in  his  public 
career  had  said:  "I  regard  religion  as  quite  unnecessary  to 
a  nation's  life.  Science  is  far  above  superstition,  and  what 
is  any  religion,  Buddhism  or  Christianity,  but  superstition 
and  a  possible  source  of  weakness  to  a  nation?"  He  lived 
to  change  this  opinion  and  in  1907,  in  an  address  at  the 
laying  of  the  corner-stone  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  building  hi 
Seoul,  he  pressed  the  following  propositions:  That  no  na- 
tion can  prosper  without  material  improvement;  that 
material  prosperity  cannot  last  long  without  a  moral  back- 
bone; that  the  strongest  backbone  is  that  which  has  a 
religious  sanction  behind  it.  The  following  year  he  took 
part  hi  the  dedication  of  the  completed  building,  where  he 
made  the  address  referred  to  hi  another  chapter;  and  that 
evening  (December  4,  1908),  he  gave  a  banquet  at  his  offi- 
cial residence  in  honor  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  at  which  he  said : 
"In  the  early  years  of  Japan's  reformation,  the  senior 
statesmen  were  opposed  to  religious  toleration,  especially 


TESTIMONY  TO  JAPAN'S  URGENT  NEED         659 

because  of  distrust  of  Christianity.  But  I  fought  vehe- 
mently for  freedom  of  belief  and  propagation,  and  finally  tri- 
umphed. My  reasoning  was  this:  Civilization  depends 
upon  morality,  and  the  highest  morality  upon  religion. 
Therefore,  religion  must  be  tolerated  and  encouraged." 

Major-General  Hibiki,  of  the  Imperial  Army:  "It  is 
important  to  send  missionaries  to  other  parts  of  Asia,  but 
it  is  far  more  important  to  send  them  to  Japan.  This  is 
the  strategic  land,  and  now  is  the  strategic  time.  For  Japan 
is  the  inevitable  leader  of  the  Orient.  It  will  make  a  vast 
difference  with  the  whole  East,  and  indeed  with  the  whole 
world,  whether  Japan  becomes  Christian  or  remains  per- 
manently an  un-Christian  nation." 

The  Kokumin,  of  Tokyo,  regarded  as  an  organ  of  the 
government:  "The  development  of  Japan  to  a  first  class 
power  within  the  past  fifty  years  is  to  a  great  extent  at- 
tributable to  the  trouble  taken  by  the  missionaries  who, 
either  by  establishing  schools  or  by  preaching  the  gospel 
of  Christ  in  the  churches,  have  cultivated  the  minds  of  the 
Japanese  and  enhanced  the  standard  of  their  morals.  It 
is  to  be  hoped  that  the  missionaries  will  redouble  their 
energies  and  zeal  in  promoting  the  welfare  and  happiness 
of  the  Japanese." 

If  any  one  in  America  or  Great  Britain  doubts  whether 
Christian  missions  are  needed  or  desired  by  the  Japanese, 
let  him  ponder  these  emphatic  statements  by  representative 
Japanese.  They  believe  that  the  duty  of  the  hour  is  of 
the  most  urgent  description.  President  Harada,  of  Kyoto, 
writes:  "The  situation  in  the  Orient  constitutes  one  of  the 
most  splendid  opportunities,  and  at  the  same  time  one  of 
the  greatest  crises  in  the  whole  history  of  the  Church.  .  .  . 
The  Christianization  of  Japan  is  no  holiday  task;  indeed, 
it  is  certain  to  be  a  long  and  a  severe  campaign.  Japan, 
with  all  her  progress  in  the  arts  and  crafts  of  civilization, 
and  all  her  friendliness  toward  Christian  ethical  standards, 
is  far  from  being  a  Christian  nation.  Yet  Japan  is  a  prize 
worth  capturing.  Gigantic  as  are  the  internal  forces  ar- 
rayed against  Christianity,  the  Christian  cohorts  are  daily 


660  THE  MASTERY  OF  THE  FAR  EAST 

growing  in  numbers  and  efficiency.  The  disquieting  con- 
sideration is  that  the  tides  of  the  new  social  and  religious 
life  are  waiting  for  no  man." 

No  more  significant  event  has  occurred  in  modern  times, 
few  more  significant  events  in  all  history,  than  the  emer- 
gence of  Japan  from  the  isolation  and  ignorance  of  hoary 
centuries  into  the  noonday  blaze  of  world  prominence. 
With  remarkable  energy  and  skill  the  Japanese  are  adapt- 
ing themselves  to  the  wider  demands  of  the  new  era.  They 
have  amply  demonstrated  that  they  are  not  an  inferior 
people.  They  have  been  justly  recognized  at  the  Peace 
Conference  in  Paris  as  one  of  the  five  major  Powers,  on  a 
plane  of  equality  with  Great  Britain,  France,  Italy  and  the 
United  States.  They  should  have,  not  a  grudging  toler- 
ance, but  a  cordial  welcome  as  an  equal  member  of  the 
family  of  nations.  They  have  done  some  splendid  things 
already  and  they  will  undoubtedly  do  more.  They  have 
achieved  the  mastery  of  the  Far  East.  They  are  "leading 
the  Orient — but  whither?"  Their  best  men  are  striving, 
under  a  solemn  sense  of  responsibility,  to  have  their  coun- 
try lead  with  "clean  hands  and  a  pure  heart"  toward  high 
levels  of  national  character  and  influence. 

A  spiritually  regenerated  Japan  would  mean  much  for 
the  Far  East  and  for  the  whole  world.  The  very  solidarity 
of  the  Japanese  nation  would  powerfully  reinforce  its  im- 
pact for  righteousness.  The  energy  and  courage  which  so 
eminently  characterize  the  Japanese,  then-  readiness  to  adapt 
themselves  to  new  conditions,  their  sacrificial  willingness  to 
dare  and  to  die  for  the  cause  they  espouse — these  qualities, 
if  pervaded  and  inspired  by  the  spirit  of  Christ,  would  make 
Japan  one  of  the  greatest  powers  for  good  that  the  world 
has  known.  Regenerative  forces  have  already  begun  to 
operate  most  promisingly.  Many  intelligent  Japanese  are 
earnestly  trying  to  strengthen  them.  The  character  of 
these  Japanese  justifies  large  hopes  for  the  future.  To  aid 
them  in  seeking  the  best  things  for  Japan  and  the  Far  East 
is  our  high  privilege  as  well  as  our  imperative  duty.  The 
Japanese  tell  us  that  they  need  our  co-operation,  and  we 


TESTIMONY  TO  JAPAN'S  URGENT  NEED        661 

should  give  it  to  them  in  ample  measure.    In  the  words  of 
Mrs.  Browning: 

"It  is  the  hour  for  souls, 
That  bodies,  leavened  by  the  will  and  love, 
Be  lightened  to  redemption.    The  world's  old; 
But  the  old  world  waits  the  time  to  be  renewed, 
Toward  which  new  hearts  in  individual  growth 
Must  quicken,  and  increase  to  multitude 
In  new  dynasties  of  the  race  of  men, 
Developed  whence  shall  grow  spontaneously 
New  churches,  new  economies,  new  laws 
Admitting  freedom,  new  societies 
Excluding  falsehood;  He  shall  make  all  new." 


INDEX 


Abdication,  Korean  Emperor's,  202- 
203 

Adams,  James  E.,  509,  515 

Agnosticism,  340 

Agreements,  "Gentlemen's,"  398; 
Ishii-Lansing,  410-415;  see  Treaties 

Agriculture,  9-10,  99,  233,  274,  307, 
359-360 

Ainu,  229-230 

Alexeieff,  Admiral,  167,  168 

Allen,  Horace  N.,  59,  62,  78,  199, 
501-502,  505 

Alliance,  Anglo-Japanese,  174,  182, 
189-191 

Alphabet,  53,  75,  324-325 

America  and  Americans,  136,  174- 
176, 183,  252-253,  316;  and  China, 
431,  438;  government  of,  110, 183, 
185,  198-201;  and  Japan,  393  sg.; 
Japanese  in,  394  sg.;  and  Korea, 
9,  40-44,  78-79,  501-502;  and 
Manchuria,  214-215;  in  Philip- 
pines, 342-343,  369,  370,  584;  and 
Siberia,  449-451,  454,  460-461, 
464-465;  South  America,  394,  420, 
426,  428,  438;  trade  in  Far  East, 
280-282,  422 

Amur,  457 

Ancestors  and  ancestral  worship,  70- 
71,  83-85,  244-247,  321,  328,  600 

Andong,  18 

Anglican  Church,  504,  647 

Animism,  85-92,  509,  517 

Annexation,  of  Korea,  195  sq.,  204- 
206,  369 

Appenzeller,  H.  G.,  503 

Arabs,  20 

Architecture,  49-50 

Armenians,  441 

Army,  American,  266-267;  Chinese, 
112  sg.;  Japanese,  112  sg.,  149,  254 
sg.,  320,  405,417-418;  Korean,  35- 
36;  Salvation,  379 

Arsenals,  434 

Art,  Korean,  20,  53-55;  Japanese, 
275-276 


Assimilation,  Japanese  in  Korea,  561, 

582-584,  609 
Association,     Buddhist     Protective, 

333;     Buddhist    Women's,    332; 

Buddhist     Young     Men's,     332; 

Young  Men's  Christian,  332,  349, 

505,  512,  526,  638-639 
Australia,  Japanese  in,  394;  missions 

of,  504 
Autocracy,    in    America,    460-461; 

hi  Germany,  481 ;  in  Japan,  292  sg., 

583;  in  Russia,  177 
Avison,  O.  R.,  93,  95,  103-105,  140, 

552 

Baghdad,  462 

Baikal,  Lake,  127 

Banks,  282,  356,  422-423 

Baptism,  611,  618 

Bashford,  James  W.,  414 

Beans,  212 

Belcher,  Edwin,  39 

Bible,   interpretation   of,    546,    644, 

646,    651;     in    schools,    586    sg.; 

societies,  469-470,  505,  530,  638; 

translations  of,  75,  549-550,  620, 

623,  638 

Blagovieschensk,  449,  464 
Blind,  313,  472 
Bolsheviki,  453-454,  458-462 
Books,  see  Literature 
Brent,  Charles  H.,  384 
Britain,  Great,   134,   136,  174,  182, 

189-191,  387,  391,  404,  416,  419- 

421,  431-432,  435,  439,  441,  451, 

454 

Broughton,  W.  R.,  15,  39 
Brown,  J.  McLeavy,  36,  134-136 
Brown,   Samuel  R.,   394,   622,   623, 

638 

Bryce,  James,  486 
Buck,  Alfred  E.,  642 
Buddhism,  81-86,  289,  313,  328  sg., 

517,  629-630,  640,  653 
Bunker,  Dalzell  A.,  78-79,  504,  509 


663 


664 


INDEX 


California,  Japanese  in,  288,  395  sq., 
408,582 

Canada,  missions  of,  505 

Cannon,  54,  112 

Carts,  100-101 

Cassini,  Count,  174-175 

Castles,  259-260 

Casualties,  in  war,  265-272 

Cecil,  Lord  Robert,  451,  479 

Cemeteries,  see  Graves 

Census,  44 

Ceremonies,  601 

Chairs,  96-97 

Chamberlain,  Basil  H.,  244-245 

Chang-chun,  212 

Chaplains,  628-629 

Chemulpo,  3,  13,  155 

Cheng-chiatun,  428-429 

China  and  Chinese,  6,  20-21,  23,  44, 
109  sq.,  130,  189-190,  248-249, 
280-281,  293-294,  387-390,  444; 
and  America,  478;  Japanese  in, 
394,  416  sq.,  423-446;  Koreans  in, 
532;  missionaries  in,  469,  472-473, 
476,  487  sq.;  and  Siberia,  452,  454, 
465;  and  world  war,  430  sq. 

Chosen,  VI,  see  Korea 

Christianity  and  Christians,  in  Amer- 
ica, 626;  in  China,  469-470,  476, 
487  sq.;  in  Far  East,  469-470; 
in  France,  626;  in  England,  626; 
in  Japan,  306,  315,  330,  336,  380, 
470,  474,  476,  539,  611-661;  in 
Korea,  101-106,  487-610;  inter- 
nationalism of,  478  sq. 

Christie,  Dugald,  211-212 

Chung  Yun  Hoi,  349-350 

Church,  Anglican,  504;  in  Far  East, 
469-470;  Greek  Orthodox,  484, 
619, 621, 647;  Protestant,  hi  Japan, 
622  sq.t  643  sq.;  in  Korea,  506  sq., 
524  sq.,  545  sq.,  566  sq.;  Roman 
Catholic,  in  Japan,  487  sq.,  617, 
647;  in  Korea,  487  sq. 

Cities,  Korean,  12-19, 23;  see  Kyoto, 
Osaka,  Tokyo,  etc. 

Civilization,  and  missionaries,  471  sq., 
476 

Clement,  Ernest  W.,  377 

Cloisonne^  275 

Coal,  9,  208-209,  438 

College,  Chosen  Christian,  550,  603- 
605;  medical,  552,  557-558,  604 

Combas,  J.  G.,  337 


Concessions,  48,  142-145,  152,  208, 

343,  417,  433 
Conferences,     Methodist,     548-549; 

of  religions,  629-630,  653 
Confucianism,  83-85,  600,  629 
Conspiracy,  Korean,  344,  348,  534, 

565,  571-573 

Constitution,  Japanese,  227,  627 
Conventions,  see  Treaties 
Co-operation,   of    missions    and 

churches,  646  sq. ;  see  Union 
Copper,  9,  420 
Corfe,  Charles  J.,  504 
Correspondents,  war,  241-242 
Cotton,  48,  55-56,  64,  280-285,  360, 

404 

Council,  Federated  Mission,  594,  606 
Courts,  33-34,  344,  346,  359,  517, 

572,  585 

Creeds,  643  sq.;  see  Theology 
Crime,  59 

Cromie,  Francis,  460 
Crosby,  Julia  N.,  315 
Crow,  Carl,  240,  303,  408 
Currency,  282,  355 
Curzon,  Lord,  45,  341 
Customs,  Japanese,  234  sq.;  Korean, 

64  sq. ;  see  Tariff 
Czar,  Russian,  130, 182, 191 
Czecho-Slovaks,  453-454,  456,  459 

Dairen  (Dalny),  130-131,  132,  187- 

188,  214 

Dancing-girls,  see  Gesang  and  Geisha 
Debts,  national,  178,  181,  273-274, 

422,  431-432 
Delegates,  Council  of  Soldiers'  and 

Workmen's,  459 
Democracy,  292  sq.,  460,  481 
Demons,  86-92,  103-104,  509,  517, 

556 

Diet,  Japanese,  294  sq. 
Disease,  47,  87-92,  95,  265-272,  308, 

508 

Divorce,  316 
Docks,  12-13 
Doshisha,  290,  608-609 
Dress,  Chinese,  280;  Japanese,  234- 

235,  237;   Korean,  18,  48,  64  sq., 

280,374 

Dutch,  in  Korea,  37-38 
Duties,  see  Tariff 
Dynasty,    Japanese,    244;     Korean, 

26-27 


INDEX 


665 


Ebina,  L,  306 

Edicts,  anti-Christian,  614-617 

Education,  in  America,  597;  in  Great 
Britain,  597;  in  India,  597-598; 
industrial,  360,  553-554;  in  Japan, 
227,  315-316,  318  sq.,  325-326,  333, 
588-590,  594;  in  Korea,  78-80, 
368,  516,  542,  549-555,  586  sq. 

Electricity,  228 

Emigration,  Japanese,  149-151,  204, 
343,  360,  369-370,  394  sq.,  417,  437, 
448;  Korean,  57 

Emperors,  Chinese,  21  sq.,  109  sq., 
248;  Manchu,  109, 116, 210;  Japa- 
nese, 227,  244-247,  294-295,  303, 
319-320,  601-602,  623;  Korean, 
22  sq.,  26  sq.,  48,  67,  78,  109  sq., 
126, 140  sq.,  196-207,  250,  343,  502, 
518,  551 

Episcopal,  Protestant,  622,  647,  650 

Espionage,  344-346 

Etiquette,  Korean,  68 

Examinations,  323-324 

Expedition,  Body-Snatching,  40,  42 

Exports,  Japanese,  279  sq.,  389  sq., 
420  sq.,  447  sq. 

Extra-territoriality,  227-228 

Factories,  279-284,  308-312 
Ferre'ol,  Jean-Joseph,  495-496 
Feudalism,  27,  49,  227,  229,  246,  259- 

260,  289-290 

Fisheries,  10-11,  151,  152,  188 
Flexner,  Abraham,  386 
Flour,  213,  275,  280-281 
Folk-lore,  76 
Food,  47,  50-51,  55 
Foot-binding,  472 
Foreigners,  hi  Far  East,  93,  225  sq., 

231,  256,  276-278,  288,  371,  625  sq., 

641,  646  sq. ;  see  Americans,  British, 

etc. 

Forests  and  forestry,  7,  359 
Formosa,  129,  231 
France  and  French,  7,  9,  28,  36,  39- 

40,  44,  110,  118,  135-136,  419,  432, 

493,  496 
Fuji,  Mt.,  232 
Funerals,  68-71 
Fusan,  3,  12-13,  118,  152,  535 

Gambling,  51 
Geisha,  377,  383 
Genghis  Khan,  25-26 


Genro,  see  Statesmen 

Gensan,  3,  8,  15 

George,  Lloyd,  453 

Germany,  9,  190,  254,  306,  320,  416, 

419,  430  aq.,  440,  448  aq.,  458 
Gesang,  32,  51,  74-75 
Gibbon,  Edward,  519 
Gillett,  Phillip  L.,  505,  512 
Ginseng,  10 
Gold,  9 

Goodnow,  Frank  J.,  436 
Goucher,  John  F.,  503,  543 
Government,  General,  in  Korea,  195 

sq.,  341  sq.,  354  sq.,  559  sq.,  586  sq.; 

Japanese,  249-250,  292  sq.,  391,  629 

sq.;  Korean,  27  sq.,  109  sq.,  348, 

362-363;  ownership,  285,  Western, 

see  America,  Britain,  etc. 
Graves,  70,  84 
Greek  Orthodox,  Missions,  618  sq.; 

629,  647-648 
Griffis,  William  Elliot,  20,  126,  247, 

471 
Gulick,  Sidney  L.,  309-310,  395,  397, 

425 
Gutzlaff,  Charles,  39,  500 

Hai  Ju,  94-95 

Hall,  Basil,  4,  39;  M.  J.,  507-508 

Hamel,  Hendrik,  38 

Han  River,  5,  6,  23 

Kara,  Kei,  304-305 

Harada,  Tasuku,  634,  659 

Harbin,  128,  212-213 

Harbors,  3,  13,  15,  130,  132-133,  143, 

145 
Harris,  Merriman  C.,  603;  Townsend, 

393,  622 

Hasegawa,  Viscount,  360 
Hats,  Korean,  65,  69 
Hawaiian  Islands,  Japanese  in,  394, 

405,  406,  408 
Hearn,  Lafcadio,  245,  655 
Hepburn,  James  C.,  394,  622-623,  638 
Hiaksai,  23-24 
Hibiki,  Nobusuke,  638,  659 
Hideyoshi,  112  sq.,  613-614 
Hojin,  603-605 
Holcombe,  Chester,  43,  153 
Holidays,  600 
Holt,  William  S.,  501 
Honda,  Masujiro,  653;  Yoitsu,  634, 

649 

Horvath,  General,  454 
Hospitality,  59-60,  100,  232 


666 


INDEX 


Hospitals,  469-470,  472,  502,  541, 
552,  556-558,  617,  628,  633,  640 

Houses,  Japanese,  233-234;  Korean, 
49,  73,  99 

Howard,  Meta,  M.D.,  503 

Hulbert,  Homer  B.,  78-79,  126,  140, 
198,  347 

Hymns,  332 

Ibuka,  K,  320,  634,  643 

II  Chin  Hoi,  348-351 

Illegitimacy,  376 

Illiteracy,  76,  458 

Imbert,  Laurent  Marie-Joseph,  494- 

495 

Imbrie,  William,  628,  632 
Immigration,  see  Emigration 
Immorality,  Japanese,  308-309,  329- 

330,  336,  376  sq.,  472;  Korean,  51, 

74,  82;  Russian,  169-170 
Imports,  Japanese,  279 
Indemnities,  129,  180-181,  188,  399, 

431-432 
India,  293,  394,  420,  435,  442,  517- 

518,  597-598 
Inns,  100 

Inouye,  Count,  628 
Insane,  472 
Intemperance,  in  Korea,  51 ;  in  Japan, 

313-314,  333 
Internationalism,  and  missions,  478 

sq. 

Inventions,  326 
Ireland,  442 
Iron,  9,  208-209,  438 
Ishii,  Viscount  K.,  410-415,  427,  429 
Islands,  3-5 
Italy,  255-256 
Ito,  Prince,  120,  125,  193,  196-197, 

203,  205,  351,  354-357,  562-563, 

576-577,  639,  658 
lyenaga,  Toyokishi,  254,  418,  439 

Japan  and  Japanese,  agriculture,  149, 
233,  274;  Ainu  in,  229;  area,  149, 
231;  army,  148  sq.,  155  sq.,  166  sq., 
257  sq.',  autocracy,  292  sq.;  cabinet, 
295  sq.;  commerce,  151,  273  sq., 
419  sq.;  constitution,  227;  courts, 
227-228;  customs,  234  sq.;  democ- 
racy in,  292  sq.;  education,  227, 
315-316,  318  sq.,  325-326,  333, 588- 
590,  594;  emperors,  see  Emperor; 
emigration,  149-151,  204,  343,  360, 
369-370,  394  sq.,  417,  437,  448;  ex- 


ports, 151,  273  sg.,  404,  419  sq., 
432;  feudalism,  227-229;  finances, 
181;  fisheries,  151-152;  govern- 
ment, 244-247, 249-250,  292  sg.,  see 
Government;  history,  229-230, 245; 
houses,  233-234;  imports,  151,  404, 
423  sg.,  432;  and  America,  226,  393 
sg.;  and  China,  111  sg.,  389,  394, 
410  sg.,  416  sg.,  420,  423-446;  and 
Great  Britain,  see  Britain;  and 
Korea,  7-18,  44,  47,  66-67,  109  sg., 
133  sg.,  148  sg.,  195  sg.,  341  sg.,  354 
sg.,  559  sg.;  and  Manchuria,  212  sg. ; 
and  Russia,  127  sq.,  148  sg.;  and 
Siberia,  447  sg.;  military  strength, 
254  sg.;  missions  in,  469  sg.,  611- 
661 ;  manufactures,  273  sg. ;  nation- 
alism, 586  sg.;  navy,  112-114,  122, 
124  sg.,  148,  155,  163-167;  patriot- 
ism, 180,  192,  244-247,  251-253, 
264,  272;  people,  225,  229-247,  250, 
264,  304,  326-327,  627,  644  sg.,  652, 
655  sg.;  population,  149,  231-232, 
275;  railways,  227-228;  post-offices, 
227;  religions,  see  Buddhism,  Chris- 
tianity, Confucianism,  Shintoism; 
religious  liberty,  627,  658-659; 
scenery,  232;  shipping,  151;  sol- 
diers, 160-162, 170-171;  social  con- 
ditions, 307  sg.;  taxes,  180-181;  tel- 
egraphs, 151,  228;  theology  in,  643 
sg.;  treaties,  see  Treaties;  wars,with 
China,  112  sg.;  with  Korea,  112  sg.; 
with  Russia,  148  sg.,  166  sg.,  178 
sg.;  and  European  War,  416  sg. 

Jenks,  Jeremiah,  413,  429,  432 

Jesuits,  611  sg. 

Jickie,  52 

Jinrikisha,  239 

Junks,  94 

Kamakura,  329 

Kaneko,  Baron,  185 

Kangkai,  510 

Kang-wa,  4,  5,  504 

Kataoka,  K.,  634 

Kato,  Viscount,  297,  304 

Katsura,  Count,  176,  484,  627 

Kennan,  George,  45,  533 

Kerosene,  56,  277-278 

Kija,  14,  20-23 

Kikuchi,  Baron,  244,  325 

Kim,  Andrew,  495-496;   Chang  Sik, 

507 
Kindergartens,  633 


INDEX 


667 


Kirin,  24 

Kitan,  tribes,  24,  25 

Knox,  Philander,  215-218 

Kodama,  General,  168 

Komatsu,  M.,  561,  591-596,  601,  603 

Komura,  Count,  J.,  183-184,  186, 
216-217 

Kondrachenko,  General,  158,  168 

Koo,  V.  K.  Wellington,  412-413,  472, 
473,  477 

Korai,  23 

Korea  and  Koreans,  annexation  by 
Japan,  195  sq.;  area,  3;  Chris- 
tianity in,  500  sq.,  524  sq.,  539  sq., 
545  sq.,  566  sq.',  customs,  64  sq.', 
education,  78  sq.,  549-559,  571; 
and  China,  109  sq.',  and  Japan, 
109  sq.,  559  sq.;  history,  20  sq.; 
Japanese  rule  in,  341-375,  559- 
610;  literature,  76  sq.;  morphine 
in,  390-392;  missions  in,  469-538, 
621;  and  Russia,  127  sq.;  people, 
20  sq.,  44  sq.,  64  sq.,  97  sq.,  250-251, 
351-353,  356,  363,  370,  516;  popu- 
lation, 44;  religions,  81  sq.;  Strait, 
128,  163-164;  students,  605;  the- 
ology in,  539  sq.;  trade,  280-281; 
training  classes,  513,  521,  529-530; 
travelling  in,  93  sq. 

Kumiai,  churches,  633,  647 

Kunsan,  3,  19 

Kuroki,  General,  155-156,  168 

Kuropatkin,  General,  160,  161,  167, 
169-171 

Kyoto,  228,  231 

Labor,  307-312,  460-461,  526 

Lacquer,  276 

Ladd,  George  T.,  45,  138,  346 

Land,  ownership  of,  278,  307-308, 
343,  359,  363,  396,  398,  628;  titles, 
359,  364-365,  580-581 

Language,  Chinese,  324-325;  Eng- 
lish, 237-238;  Korean,  68,  75; 
Japanese,  324-325 

Lansing,  Robert,  411-415 

La  Perouse  Strait,  128 

Laundry,  Korean,  65 

Lazareff,  Port,  15 

Legations,  withdrawn  from  Seoul, 
199-200 

Lepers,  472,  617 

Liao-tung,  130,  132,  148 

Liao-yang,  160 


Liberty,  religious,  563,  591,  594,  596, 
627,  658-659 

Libraries,  76,  81,  318-319 

Liggins,  John,  622 

Li  Hung  Chang,  117,  120,  122,  125, 
129,  148 

Linevitch,  General,  161, 167, 169, 179 

Literature,  Japanese,  318-319;  Ko- 
rean, 76 

Loans,  national,  419,  423,  433 

McKenzie,  F.  A.,  242,  533-534,  642 

McWilliams,  Daniel  W.,  501 

Magdalena,  Bay,  286 

Magistrates,  see  Officials 

Makaroff,  Admiral,  168 

Manchuria,  20-24,  129  sq.,  148  sq., 
154,  175,  187,  191,  208-218,  390- 
391, 429,  452, 457, 465;  missions  in, 
532 

Manchus,  116-117 

Manufactures,  275  sq.,  308-312,  422 

Maps,  38-39 

Marriage,  73,  314-316,  367,  584 

Martyrs,  488  sq.,  614  sq. 

Masampo,  3,  143-144,  152,  154,  163 

Matteson,  Hugh,  354 

Maubant,  Pierre  Philibert,  494 

Maxwell,  Captain,  4 

Medicines,  Korean,  87-92 

Methodists,  503,  505,  509,  511-512, 
530,  548,  553,  603,  647,  650 

Mexico,  286,  394,  441,  481-482,  465, 
598 

Militarism,  561  sq. 

Millard,  Thomas  F.,  242 

Minerals,  8-9,  208-209 

Missionaries,  Buddhist,  in  Korea,  334 
sq. ;  Greek  Catholic,  in  Japan,  484, 
618  sq.;  in  Korea,  621;  Protestant, 
in  China,  388;  in  Japan,  315,  319, 
333,  483-484,  622  sq.;  in  Korea, 
103-105,  497-498,  500  sq.,  539  sq.; 
in  Manchuria,  211-212;  Roman 
Catholic,  in  China,  487  sq.;  in 
Japan,  226,  611  sq.,  646  sq.;  in 
Korea,  28,  58,  60-61,  487  sq.;  and 
native  churches,  525,  547  sq. ;  atti- 
tude on  education,  586  sq.;  atti- 
tude on  government,  349-350, 
408-409,  482-483,  559  sq.,  582; 
influence  of,  469  sq.;  policy,  515 
sq.,  see  Self-propagation  and  Self- 
support 

Mobs,  59,  193,  311 


668 


INDEX 


Moffett,  Samuel  A.,  506,  531 

Mokpo,  3,  19 

Monasteries,  81-82 

Mongolia  and  Mongols,  24,  25,  26 

Money,  54,  227 

Monks,  Buddhist,  82,  517 

Monroe  Doctrine,  426-427 

Morgan,  Edwin  V.,  199-200 

Mori,  Kenkichi,  463 

Morphine,  387-392 

Motono,  Viscount,  450 

Mountains,     Diamond,     11,    81-82; 

Ever  White,  5,  11;  Fuji,  232;  Pul 

Tai  San,  102 
Mourning,  68-71 
Mukden,  162,  210-212,  214-215 
Munitions,  421-422,  424 
Murata,  George  S.,  345 
Murphy,  U.  G.,  376,  379 
Murray,  David,  320,  394 
Music,  Korean,  536 

Nagamori,  343 

Nagoya,  259,  284 

Names,  Korean,  vi,  366-367 

Nara,  329 

Nationalism,  483-484,  560,  586  sq. 

Naturalization,  397 

Navy,  Japanese,  256-257,  260-262, 

269,  320;  Korean,  36,  54, 112-114 
Neesima,  Joseph  H.,  634 
New-chwang,  212 
Nicolai,  Archbishop,  618  sq. 
Nikko,  228,  232,  310 
Ni  Taijo,  King,  26-27 
Nitobe,  I.,  314,  316,  323,  472,  634 
Nogi,  General,  156-160,  161,  168 
Nuns,  Buddhist,  328 
Nurses,  552,  558,  628,  633 

O'Dwyer,  M.  F.,  442 

Officials,  Chinese,  444;  Japanese, 
342  sq.,  354  sq.,  380-381,  559  sq., 
593,  602,  605  sq.,  609;  Korean,  17- 
18,  32  sq.,  48,  51,  68,  93,  361-368 

Okuma,  Marquis,  226,  252,  272,  296- 
297,  301,  314,  324,  337,  396-397, 
399,  400,  402,  476,  637,  657 

Opium,  387-390,  472 

Ordinances,  educational,  588,  591  sq. ; 
religious,  580 

Orphanages,  617,  633 

Osaka,  228,  231,  282-283,  379-380 

Oyama,  Field-Marshal,  160,  168 

Ozaki,  Y.,  302,  304,  307 


Paper,  54 

Parents,  respect  for,  70-71,  83-84; 
see  Ancestors 

Parties,  in  Japan,  304-306 

Patriotism,  Chinese,  248-249;  Japa- 
nese, 244-247,  251-253,  264,  272; 
Korean,  250-251,  348  sq. 

Pavloff,  M.,  143 

Peerage,  Japanese,  294-295;  Korean, 
368 

Perry,  Matthew  C.,  226,  393 

Persecution,  in  Japan,  226,  613  sq., 
624  sq. ;  in  Korea,  488  sq.,  507  sq., 
534-535,  567 

Persia,  293,  517-518 

Philippines,  342-343,  369,  370,  381, 
403,  405-408,  441,  584 

Pierson  Memorial,  551 

Pilgrims,  Buddhist,  82 

Poetry,  Korean,  76-78 

Police,  344,  380,  564  sq.,  585,  593 

Pony,  Korean,  97-98 

Pope,  492-493 

Porcelain,  275 

Port  Arthur,  129,  155-160,  169,  187- 
188,  220-221,  288 

Ports,  3,  12,  15,  130,  143,  378 

Portsmouth,  treaty  of,  178  sq. 

Post-offices,  227,  502 

Pottery,  54-55 

Poverty,  48  sq.,  517,  526 

Prayer,  527-529,  545 

Premillenarianism,  540-541 

Presbyterians,  501,  504-505,  547- 
549,  643 

Press,  American,  407;  Japanese,  192- 
193, 237, 241-242, 301-302, 319, 330, 
408,  634,  639;  Korean,  345-346 

Priests,  Buddhist,  82,  328  sq.;  Greek 
Orthodox,  618  sq.;  Roman  Cath- 
olic, 487  sq.,  611  sq.;  Shintoist, 
329,  337-340 

Printing,  53,  318,  470 

Prisons,  313 

Prostitution,  see  Immorality 

Protestants,  in  China,  470;  in  Japan, 
470,  622  sq.,  643  sq. ;  in  Korea,  470, 
497-498,  500  sq.,  524  sq. 

Puhai,  24 

Punishments,  33-35,  58,  227,  313 

Pyongyang,  6,  14-15,  124,  155,  506- 
509,  520,  528,  543,  605 

Queen,  Korean,  137-140 
Quelpart,  4,  531 


INDEX 


669 


Railways,  in  China,  249,  417-418, 
439;  in  Japan,  237-238,  285,  287; 
in  Korea,  12,  135-136,  144,  151- 
152;  in  Manchuria,  129,  187,  212, 
215-218,  220,  227-228;  Trans- 
Siberian,  127-128,  457 

Red  Cross,  312-313,  640 

Reforms,  in  Japan,  309,  312-317,  348 
sq.,  354  sq. 

Reinsch,  Paul  S.,  438 

Religions,  conference  of,  629-630, 
653;  in  schools,  321,  586  sq.;  see 
Animism,  Buddhism,  Christianity, 
Confucianism,  Shamanism,  Shin- 
toism 

Rescript,  imperial,  320-321,  325 

Revivals,  509  sq.,  543-546,  570,  632 

Revolution,  Chinese,  248,  443-444; 
Korean,  348  sq.;  and  missionaries, 
475, 570;  Russian,  177,  447,  453  sq. 

Rice,  233,  360 

Rivers,  5-7 

Roads,  96,  101,  145 

Rodgers,  Admiral  John,  23,  40-42, 
110 

Rojestvensky,  Admiral,  162-165,  168 

Roman  Catholics,  28,  58,  60,  61,  136- 
137, 470, 487  sq.,  611  sq.,  629,  647 

Roosevelt,  President,  183,  185,  198, 
201,  205,  405 

Root,  Elihu,  200-201,  410 

Rosen,  Baron  R.,  183-184,  185 

Ross,  John,  500,  510 

Russia  and  Russians,  army,  156  sq., 
170-172;  Boxer  indemnity,  432; 
education  in,  322;  in  Korea,  36, 
39,  127  sq.,  148  sq.,  363;  in  Man- 
churia, 210,  215-219;  missionaries 
of,  484,  618  sq.;  revolution  in,  177, 
447  sq.,  481;  in  Siberia,  447  sq.; 
trade  with  Japan,  421-422;  war 
with  Japan,  148  sq.,  178  sq. 

Sacrifices,  84-85,  600-601,  see  Ances- 
tors 

Saghalien,  186,  187-188,  191,  192, 
231 

Sakuma,  Lieut.  T.,  263 

Sakurai,  Lieut.  T.,  264 

Salvation,  Army,  379 

Samurai,  180,  290,  633-634 

Sanitation,  46-47,  233,  265-272,  308, 
363,  472,  508,  542,  556 

Satow,  Ernest,  474-475 


Scenery,  Japanese,  232;  Korean,  11- 

12,  95  sq.,  102-103 
Scherer,  James  A.  B.,  395,  398,  410 
Schley,  Winfield  Scott,  41 
Schools,  in  America,  597;   in  Great 

Britain,  497;    in  China,  469-470, 

473;  in  India,  597-598;  in  Japan, 

588-590,  594,  617,  623,  625,  628, 

633;    in  Korea,  78-80,  360,  368, 

503,  516,  542,  549-555,  571,  586  sq. 
Schufeldt,  R.  W.,  43 
Scranton,  William  B.  and  Mrs.  M.  F., 

503 

Sea,  Japan,  128 
Segregation,  380,  385-387 
Sekiya,  Teisaburo,  591,  604 
Self-government,  515 
Self-propagation,  515,  522,  529  sq., 

537 
Self-support,  515,  521-522,  526-527, 

537  647-648 

Seoul,' 6,  16-18,  26,  382-383,  509 
Serfdom,  49 
Severance,  Louis  H.  and  John  L.,  552, 

604 

Seward,  George  F.,  40 
Shamans,  see  Sorcerers 
Sherman,  the  General,  40-42,  110 
Shibusawa,  Baron  E.,  400-401 
Shidehara,  Tan,  586 
Shimada,  S.,  474,  476 
Shinra,  23,  24,  114 
Shintoism,  228,  321,  329,  337-340, 

629-630,  637,  640,  654 
Shipping  and  shipyards,  13,  228,  279, 

284,  286-287,  422 
Shogun,  226-227 
Shrines,  338-339,  377 
Siberia,  394,  447  sq. 
Silk,  48,  64,  276,  280,  282,  360,  404 
Slavery,  49 

Smith,  Arthur  H.,  430,  446 
Socialism,  312,  460-461 
Society,  Bible,  469-470,  505,  530,  638; 

Korean  Tract,  550;    Propagation 

of  Gospel,  504 
Soldiers,  Japanese,  260-262,  288,  342, 

345;  Russian,  288 
Sone,  Viscount,  357,  562 
Songdo,  18 

Sorai,  101-102,  510-511 
Sorcerers,  88-92,  106 
Soviets,  459,  461 
Spies,  344-346 
Standard  Oil  Co.,  277-278 


670 


INDEX 


Statesmen,  Elder,  295  sq.,  306 
Statues,  Buddhist,  328  sq. 
Stevens,  Durham  White,  351,  563 
Stoessel,  General,  158-160 
Strikes,  311 
Students,    Japanese,    325-326,    637, 

653;  Korean,  326,  353,  605 
Suffrage,  in  Japan,  294,  307 
Suicide,  196,  309-311,  332 
Sunday,  571,  578-579,  602 
Sunday-schools,  Buddhist,  331-332; 

Christian,  525,  527 
Sungari,  457 
Sunto,  25 

Supernationalism,  482-485 
Superstition,  14,  85-92,  103-104,  556 
Surgery,  90,  103-105,  267-272,  556 
Surprise,  the,  40 
Syenchyun,  510,  554,  564-565,  568, 

592-593 

Taft,  William  H.,  370,  471,  477 

Tagawa,  D.,  301-302 

Taiku,  18,  361,  509 

Tai-wen-kun,  28-29, 43, 119, 122, 137, 

139,  496 

Takahira,  K.,  183 
Tariff,  36,  285-286,  432 
Tatong  River,  6,  21 
Taxes,  34-35,  48,  180-181,  274,  294, 

307,  382-383 
Telegraphs,  151,  227 
Temperance,  313-314 
Temples,  in  Korea,  81;  in  Japan,  328- 

330,  333,  335 
Terauchi,  Count  Seiki,  13,  205,  297 

sq.,  305,  344,  357-360,  368,  369,  562 

sq.,  596,  605 
Theology,  in  Japan,  539  sq.,  643  sq.', 

in  Korea,  539  sq. 
Tides,  3,  4. 
Tigers,  8 

Timber,  142,  144-145 
Titles,  see  Land 
Tobacco,  55 
Togo,  Admiral  H.,  155,  163-166,  168, 

246-247,  263 

Tokonami,  Takejiro,  306,  629-630 
Tokyo,  228,  231 
Tong-haks,  60-63,  121 
Topknots,  52,  65-68,  362,  374. 
Torture,  33-35,  58 
Trade,  American,  404;  British,  451; 

Japanese,  273  sq.;  419  sq.;  Korean, 

48;  missionaries  and,  471 


Training-classes,  513,  521,  529-530 

Translations,  see  Bible 

Travel,  in  Korea,  93  sq.,  352,  512-513 

Travellers,  Western,  641 

Treaties,  American-Korean,  23,  43, 
110,  500;  American-Japanese,  393, 
396,  398,  410-415;  Austrian-Ko- 
rean, 43;  British-Chinese,  387;  Brit- 
ish-Japanese, 174,  182,  189-191, 
404;  British-Korean,  110;  Chinese- 
European,  432;  French-Korean, 
43;  German-Korean,  43;  Ger- 
man-Russian, 453,  462;  Italian- 
Korean,  43;  Japanese-Chinese,  120, 
125,  129,  452;  Japanese-Korean, 
195-198,  203-205;  Japanese-West- 
ern, 227;  Russian-Chinese,  130, 132, 
465;  Russian-Korean,  43, 142;  Rus- 
sian-Japanese, 134-135,  178  sq., 
217-218,  456. 

Tribute,  Korean,  109-112,  115-116, 
118 

Tripoli,  255-256 

Trollope,  M.  N.,  504 

Trotzky,  Leon,  460-462 

Tsing-tau,  381-382,  416 

Tsuda,  Ume,  631,  634 

Tsugaru,  strait,  128 

Tsushima,  12,  128,  134 

Tuck,  G.  L.,  389 

Tumen  River,  5-6 

Turkey,  293,  441,  517,  518,  598 

Turner,  H.  B.,  504 

Uchida,  Viscount  Y.,  305-306 

Uemura,  M.,  634,  647 

Underwood,  Horace  G.,  91,  140,  503, 

506,  508,  510,  550-551;  Mrs.  H.  G., 

47,  67,  504. 
Union,  church,  549;  educational,  550- 

552 

Universities,  322,  323,  653 
Un-mun,  75-76 
Unsan,  mines,  9 
Usami,  K.,  591,  604 

Verbeck,  Guido  S.,  394,  472,  622,  623, 

638 
Vice,  51,  236,  308-309,  313,  329-330, 

376  sq.,  383-384,  474 
Villages,  Korean,  12,  19,  46,  99 
Vladivostok,   15,   57,  128,  450,  451, 

454,  460,  462,  463,  464 

Wages,  285 
Wang,  C.  T.,  473 


INDEX 


671 


War,  China-Japan,  14,  112  sq.,  248,      Worship,  of  Emperor,  601-602;   see 

273-274,  474,  507-508,  518;  China-          Ancestors 

Korea,  112  sq.;  European,  271,  335,      Wright,  Luke  E.,  642 

339-340,  416  sq.,  430  sq.,  479,  481; 

Japan-Korea,  54,  112  sq.;  Russia- 

Japan,  148  sq.,  255,  264-270,  288,      Xavier,  Francis,  225,  611-613 

407,  474,  484,  619-620,  628 
Watanabe,  Noboru,  361 
Watson,  W.  Petrie,  656-657 
Weltervree,  Jan,  37-38 
Wiju,  15-16,  494 
Williams,  Channing  R.,  622 
Wilson,  President,  455,  457,  460,  461, 

463,  480-481,  486,  599 
Wipyung  Society,  349-350 
Witte,  Count  Sergius,  183-184,  186, 


191,  192,  193 
Women,  in  Japan,  314-317,  332,  376 
sq.;  in  Korea,  72-75,  99,  554 


Yajima,  Madame,  317,  380,  634 
Yalu  River,  5,  15-16,  25,  144-145 
Yamagata,  Prince,  298 
Yangbans,  17,  18,  32  sq.,  48,  51,  68, 

374 

Yi,  Prince,  207,  367,  see  Emperor 
Yokohama,  232 
Yongampo,  3, 145-146 
Yuan  Shih  Kai,  111,  293-294,  424- 

425,  476 
Yun  Chi  Ho,  571,  572 


e  Heart  of  the  Far  East. 


University  of  California 

SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 

405  Hilgard  Avenue,  Los  Angeles,  CA  90024-1388 

Return  this  material  to  the  library 

from  which  it  was  borrowed. 


If- 


UK 

MAR132000 


,:.4~. 


12008 


Jf"  000  692  733    9 


lilllllilllllli 


